When the EU starts to panic, it reaches out in a feral manner for bigger ideas. The EU army, although an idea which has been flogged to death, is still buzzing around like a fly looking for a turd to land on. But one other idea which eurocrats cling to when a real political calamity starts to cast a shadow over Brussels is expansion. During October there was much talk about ushering in a new wave of candidate countries from the Balkans, as the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, personally promises to help these countries enter the EU club.

Yet there can never be anything in Brussels more idiotic and disingenuous than this idea that the more members that the EU has, the taller it stands around the world. In 2004, the EU expanded from 15 member states to 25 as Eastern European countries, as well as Cyprus and Malta, joined – a move which Romano Prodi, the EU Commission president personally took the credit for as the crowning moment of his five-year term in office. He explained to me in an interview then how important it was, but in reality what I sensed was that EU expansion was all about keeping senior EU officials happy, as it calmed there tormented brows and gave them new tasks, objectives and a whole new ‘raison d’être’.

Yet expansion is really just self-indulgent nonsense. In 2004, when a wave of Eastern European, former Soviet bloc countries joined, some EU mandarins confided to journalists like me that it was also a very good way to rebalancing the EU, so that the old ‘Franco-German axis’ could be dissolved. In fact, nothing of the sort ever happened as the power struggle between these two EU giants and founding members of the EU has been resolved by Germany simply taking all the power and letting France believe that it is a much respected deputy in the decision making process and big thinking.

Macron himself welcomes the idea of Balkan countries joining as it will swell the ranks and make him look bigger as he plays the role of unpaid EU President.

But the reality of poorer, backward eastern countries joining the EU is that a darker ‘edge of Europe’ syndrome actually threatens the EU project with corruption, organised crime and the Muslim contingent all playing a role in giving far right groups a larger slice of the electoral cake.

The hypocrisy is outstanding. Especially from MEPs who have a voice and can talk about the problems in countries which are more or less ruled by the mob.

Romania and Bulgaria are both countries which have broken the mould on corruption, particularly in their judiciary systems. In Romania’s case, its elite promised to do something about graft to appease some EU officials’ worries. The result was simply the farcical creation of waves of anti-corruption agencies leading one top journalist in Bucharest to tell me that “we have so much anti-corruption activities now that we can more or less bottle this shit and sell it to the rest of the world, thanks to the EU”.

Balkan countries joining the EU will be the final blow for the EU, in reality. What we have learnt about Romania and Bulgaria joining is that the old idea banded about in Brussels that “we need to get them here in Brussels as members, then we can work on their governance deficit” which was a narrative I heard over and over again when I was based in the Belgian capital, is folly.

The idea that Albania is going to embrace the EU’s model of democracy and adopt literally thousands of EU directives on everything from workers’ rights to the length of car windscreen wipers is of course far-fetched. Or environmental legislation. Or women’s rights. The list is endless. Or that North Macedonia is going to become an EU utopia and tell those naughty mafia gangs to stop raking in billions from nice EU taxpayers who want to save money and buy fake cigarettes from a business which eclipses the national debt.

Like so many of the European Commission president’s ideas, this one is really crackers but it’s one which MEPs and member states will allow her to cradle. In the meantime, just as Turkey’s membership bid to join the EU was shot down by France and Germany, whose political elites didn’t like the immigration implications, the EU commission itself will work its dark magic internally to remind the German EU boss that if these Balkan countries are let in, then for the first time ever in the history of the EU, the institutions in Brussels would have to welcome and integrate thousands of Muslims in the EU bodies themselves and begin to look at the Muslim element in almost everything the EU does. The grey-haired, obscure, middle-aged Masons who really run the EU, will put their foot down at some point and no doubt use the criminal argument and the need for the “accession process” to be taken on board first. But this idea by VDL herself gives an indication about just how much of a crisis the EU is in, if it can stoop this low just for a few press releases and video handout footage to the call centre journalists in Brussels. With Poland grabbing the headlines in recent weeks about the very real possibility of following Britain in leaving the EU, it’s hardly surprising that this sort of PR stunts are presented to the media. In Brussels, they are, after all, practically on the payroll.

As elections approach, the political atmosphere in the Republika Srpska, Russia’s tiny Balkan ally, is heating up. For at least the last ten years, color revolution turbulence has been the normal accompaniment of every electoral cycle there.

It began initially in 2014 as the Serb autonomous entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, as it was constituted under the Dayton peace agreement in the wake of the 1992 – 1995 civil war, approached its parliamentary and presidential elections. The consensus within the Euro-Atlantic alliance (the coalition of states roughly co-extensive with NATO and the EU) unmistakably was that the assertive local authorities headed by President Dodik and his political party were unacceptable and that a “regime change” operation should be engineered to replace them with a compliant cast of characters.

Local agents quickly set to work to reproduce the satisfactory results previously obtained with relative ease in other “color revolution” episodes. The usual set of grievances was improvised. They were dramatised through a combination of fake “NGOs” and a relentless propaganda barrage conducted through the media, which was partly owned by Western interests and partly susceptible to their emoluments. A major television station in the city of Bijeljina, with country-wide coverage, was suborned to relentlessly spew the color revolution party line, in the confident expectation of a certain electoral triumph.

But there was an unexpected hitch. The Republika Srpska government and ruling coalition supporting it nearly lost their heads when faced with mounting street agitation, but a group of local citizens supported by allies with international experience in these matters marshalled their limited resources to counter the onslaught. In spite of overwhelming odds they succeeded, the Balkan Maidan never materialised, and the coup de grâce planned for Republica Srpska was temporarily delayed.

The next opportunity to fine tune the scenario came just before the 2018 elections in Republika Srpska. The galvanising spark was the mysterious death of a young man by the name of David Dragicevic, the responsibility for which without any firm evidence was attributed to the authorities, or the “regime” in the parlance of the color revolution phalanx. All the usual mechanisms were again activated to generate a cause célèbre designed to discredit the government and dishearten its supporters. The coup almost succeeded. President Dodik squeaked through with barely an 8,000 vote margin, but the ruling coalition failed to win in Parliament a clear majority necessary to form a government. The matter was resolved in the tried and tested Balkan way – a couple of opposition legislators were generously rewarded to switch sides and the status quo ante was successfully restored.

With predictable regularity, the identical pattern is beginning to repeat itself as the country approaches the 2022 electoral season. New factors have emerged to complicate the political and social landscape. One is the Covid crisis, which has hit the Serbian portion of Bosnia relatively hard. The other is the grave constitutional crisis provoked two months ago by the outgoing EU High representative Valentin Incko. He arbitrarily ordered that a “genocide denial law” – clearly targeting all who question the Srebrenica “genocide” narrative, which is by now sacrosanct almost everywhere but in the Republika Srpska – be inserted in the Criminal Code, prescribing harsh punishment for unbelievers of up to five years. Since practically the entire population of Republika Srpska consists of religious sceptics and outright heretics in this regard, the country might as well be encircled with barbed wire and machine-gun turrets for at least the next five years.

While primarily designed to bring external pressure and internal demoralisation, “Incko’s law,” as it is popularly known, also acted as a cohesive factor by temporarily uniting the government and its opposition against it. But the pact which Western-supported elements of the opposition concluded largely for PR reasons is already seriously fraying and the Serbian political scene is returning to its old fragmented “normal.”

Emerging at the heart of the Incko controversy is the issue of whether the High representative, set up by the Dayton agreement to play a balancing role between the former warring parties (his official job is to “interpret” the peace agreement when the local parties fail to arrive at a common understanding of its provisions), has the authority to expand his powers to the point of imposing laws and altering constitutional arrangements. Banja Luka constitutional law professor Milan Blagojevic has argued forcefully and cogently that he does not. In a series of incisive analyses in his newspaper columns and television appearances he has expounded the view that the micro-managing authority claimed by a succession of High representatives is in reality an insolent bluff, unsupported by any of the provision of the peace agreement that established his office. In protest against what he has harshly denounced as “criminal abuse,” Prof. Blagojevic did something utterly unique in that part of the world. He resigned his parallel job as a District Court judge stating that his conscience forbade him to perform judicial duties in the milieu of lawlessness created by the illegal encroachment of the country’s foreign overlord. Hopefully he will impress other public servants by modelling a sacrificial example of professional integrity for their edification, but realistically no one should hold their breath.

Propelled by unanimous public rejection of what is justifiably perceived as the High representative’s tyrannous act, and perhaps also inspired by the upcoming elections, the government has ratcheted up its rhetoric to the point of openly raising a heretofore taboo topic – possible secession from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Simultaneously, in an evident bow to Prof. Blagojevic’s insistent arguments, it has mentioned the possibility of asking Parliament to annul all previous similarly illicit decrees issued by the High representative, going back at least twenty years. To top off the listed examples of disobedience, former President Dodik, who is now the Serb member of Bosnia’s rotating Presidency, refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the appointment of Incko’s successor, German politician Christian Schmidt, or even meet with him, because he was selected by a committee of NATO governments and not by the UN Security Council, as international legal norms prescribe. In that he has the firm support of the governments of the Russian Federation and China.

So now we come round to the emerging scenario for this season’s color revolution in the Republika Srpska. Clearly, something needs to be done and order must be imposed. The initial plan that was thought up by the Tavistock brain trust is the currently raging oxygen affair. Gene Sharp must be smiling in his grave. Briefly, upon the public spirited complaint filed by Transparency International, a solicitous outfit financed by USAID, alleging that a hospital in the town of Trebinje was using industrial instead of human grade oxygen for the treatment of Covid patients, health inspectors swarmed from Sarajevo (where Republika Srpska can scarcely expect to get any breaks) to determine that indeed there was something fishy about the oxygen formula being used. Gaining traction now are vague and non-evidence based assertions (recall the David Dragicevic affair) that the uncaring “regime” had a corrupt deal with the oxygen provider. The public, who predominantly do not consist of chemists, are being bombarded with highly technical and also politically condimented “information” about grave health risks (on top of the already existing pandemic) posed by the deliberately substituted inferior oxygen. Oddly, no proof of Covid fatalities or testimony of injuries accompanies these accounts of appalling official corruption. Readers with longer memories will remember the staged poisoning affair in Kosovo in 1990, when Albanian school children were instructed to complain of dizziness and stomach cramps provoked by nefarious substances injected in their lunch food by Serb authorities. They all miraculously recovered as soon as foreign correspondents had left. In Trebinje so far no spectacular performances to showcase the government’s public health malfeasance have been organised for the benefit of the international press, but surprises may be in store as the spin continues.

As relations between major geopolitical players steadily deteriorate the Balkans are acquiring increasing importance for NATO powers for exactly the same reasons that they were essential to Nazi Germany in the early forties, to the extent that it was willing to postpone the attack on the Soviet Union and divert its resources in order to first bring the entire area in its orbit. The Serb half of Bosnia is a major piece of the contemporary version of a very similar geopolitical jigsaw puzzle. Russian policy meanderings over the years in that part of the world merit at most a mixed assessment, and that is putting it charitably. Russia cannot afford to further degrade its regional position and security interests by losing Republika Srpska, not to speak of Serbia itself. All the more so because it is not really necessary to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to keep them both firmly and beneficially in its fold.

Well, what else is new? Afghanistan is said to be the graveyard of empires, but turbulence in the Balkans often is also the precursor to an empire or two being buried in its wake. Not for nothing, in the fall of 1918, as the Salonica front was crumbling, Kaiser Wilhelm complained to his General Staff what a shame it was for the outcome of the Great War to be decided by 70,000 Serbs. Some decades previously, his chancellor Bismarck (who himself had more than a few drops of Serbian blood on his grandmother’s side) averred dismissively that the Balkan riff-raff was not worth the bones of a single one of his Pomeranian Grenadiers. By 1918 Wilhelm had learned better.

At the moment, it is Montenegro that holds centre stage in a brewing Balkan political storm. The ostensible provocation – the consecration of the country’s new Orthodox metropolitan – is as unlikely a trigger for a major crisis just as Montenegro (once celebrated in breezy operettas such as “The Merry Widow”) appears to be an unexpected mise en scène for a major geopolitical earthquake.

In the event, most Balkan eyes will be riveted on the old Montenegrin royal capital of Cetinje, where on September 5 an oddly controversial ecclesiastical consecration ceremony should take place in the local monastery, which also happens to be the metropolitan’s residence and symbolic headquarters. Why would a solemn religious rite in a monastery be anything but routine? Because it is scheduled to take place in a part of the world where everything offends someone, or has a double or even triple, or occult, significance which is thought to menace someone’s perceived self-interest, and because in that part of the world where everything is convoluted and simplicity is scarce, virtually nothing can be passed off as routine.

Without seeking for an explanation which goes back centuries (an approach that history-obsessed natives would undoubtedly prefer) we can probably manage to get a good grasp of it by backing up a mere couple of decades. The statelet of Montenegro, the only patch of Serbian territory to avoid falling under the Ottoman yoke, was a proud Orthodox principality (after 1910 recognized as a kingdom) which cherished its organically close ties to Russia to the extent that in 1905 in all seriousness it declared war on Japan, in solidarity with its Big Brother. After World War I Montenegro joined Serbia and Slavic lands that had formed part of defeated Austria-Hungary in the newly established Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In the interwar period, many ideologically naïve Montenegrins were unable to distinguish between the Russia for which they went to war with Japan and the new dispensation that had replaced it. Consequently, communism became “in” with a portion of the population, while another portion remained steadfast in its more sober Russophile yet also traditional Serbian nationalist convictions.

The split in Montenegrin society, pretty much down the middle, bore bitter fruit in the form of unrestrained factional slaughter during the dark and confused period of World War II Axis occupation. After 1945, the winners in the tragic civil war, waged within the context of anti-occupation resistance, sought to reshape Montenegro (as well as the rest of Yugoslavia) in their own ideological image. After ruthless extermination of traditionalist elements, the supporters of the new system decreed not just that God was dead, but also that everything Montenegrins had been told before about their identity was false. The “nation builders” who seized control of the country now informed their subjects that they were not Serbs at all but were partakers of a distinct Montenegrin ethnicity, with all the requisite appurtenances which always accompany such identity decrees issued from on high. Yes, eventually a “Montenegrin language” was also invented and adorned with two new symbols that no one had ever heard of or seen before, thought up by a committee of foreign linguists specially hired for the purpose.

With the advent of “democracy” in the 1990s, the fiefdom of Montenegro was turned over to a promising young politician by the name of Milo Djukanovic. Belying his youthful appearance (that was thirty years ago) Mr. Djukanovic displayed some remarkable political nimbleness by successfully combining newly prescribed, post 1990 political forms with the ideological substance inherited from the preceding not-so-democratic times. The resulting, breathtakingly hybrid, system of governance produced numerous ostensible anomalies. The rebranded old political elite, led by Djukanovic, took Montenegro into NATO, glibly talked Euroatlanticist “values” gibberish while never fully mastering their own “Montenegrin” dialect, with its two contrived but distinctively unique symbols, which they were disingenuously promoting for use by others, and in general it toed the new Washington-Brussels party line with old-time ideological fervour, and without ever missing a beat.

The seemingly eternal ascendancy of the refurbished old regime cabal, now conveniently repackaged as pro-NATO and “European” enthusiasts (sadly, an opportunistic conversion not in the least unique following the disintegration of the Eastern bloc), came to a screeching halt two years ago when quite possibly they made the biggest mistake of their political career. At some point, NATO overlords had apparently hinted to their Montenegrin vassals that in addition to its own language, airline (since gone into bankruptcy, as irony would have it), etc. the fledgling new Alliance “partner” was expected to seal its new identity with the formation of its own “church” (analogies to the Ukraine scenario are anything but accidental). Presto, the atheist crew steering Montenegro into NATO and values-based European “integrations” promptly undertook to comply. It composed a new law divesting the metropolitanate of the predominant Serbian Orthodox Church of its status and property, intending thus to set the stage for replacing it with the self-styled “Montenegrin Orthodox Church” that regime operatives had earlier brazenly set up as an NGO. It was again a re-enactment of the Ukrainian playbook, complete with feelers to Patriarch Bartholomew to bless the impious new arrangement.

And that is when all hell broke loose, to the infinite chagrin and gnashing of teeth of all concerned in this atheist-inspired religious swindle, but with very serious political implications.

Massive, spontaneous religious processions erupted throughout the tiny country in which over half of the population participated. They lasted for months and in the previously scheduled parliamentary elections of August 2020 a new majority coalition, though not as coherent as one might have wished, emerged to govern the country. Upon the advice of the late metropolitan Amfilohije, who subsequently passed away with a covid diagnosis, a new prime minister, Zdravko Krivokapic, was installed to struggle with the residual hydra of the previous regime. As it turned out, compared to the Montenegrin swamp, the Washington swamp that Trump had proposed to eradicate was a rather innocuous affair.

Months after taking office, prime minister Krivokapic has precious little to show for his efforts. Most key figures from the ancien régime are still firmly in place and sabotaging at every turn. They have already provoked numerous physical incidents, manipulating crowds of brainwashed identitarian “Montenegrins” fanatics to destabilise the country and prepare the conditions deemed necessary for the cabal’s political restoration.

Fast forward to the consecration of the new metropolitan on September 5. The cabal has made it clear that the consecration of the newly elected Serbian Orthodox Church metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral Joanikije in his Cetinje monastery would not be allowed because he is an agent of Serbia, a foreign state, and an official of the “foreign” Serbian Orthodox Church. This preposterous demand, made by elements of the preceding pro-NATO and pro-European Union regime, is equivalent to objecting to the investiture of the archbishop Paris at the Sacré-Cœur cathedral on the rationale that he is an agent of the Vatican.

Tensions are rising in Montenegro as September 5 approaches. Goons of old regime supporters are staging hostile demonstrations in front of the ancient monastery and threatening violence if the consecration proceeds as planned. The only comment so far of the U.S. and British embassies on this outrage, the extraordinary trampling of religious liberty in a NATO country fully on track for membership in the enlightened European Union, was an insipid appeal for “calm,” while endorsing the search for alternative venues for the “controversial” ceremony.

On September 5 blood may or may not be shed, but at the instigation of NATO’s Montenegrin foot soldiers feathers are guaranteed to fly. Empty Atlanticist “human rights” and respect for religion promises are again on ostentatious display. The perfidious weaponisation of a religious ceremony as a high potency political issue to generate social strife and even violence is part and parcel of the ominous chaos strategy for the Balkans that Western strategists are pursuing, whose general contours are increasingly visible even to the untrained eye.

As work nears completion in the first phase of an ambitious project in Montenegro to develop a highway that will connect the Adriatic port of Bar with Serbia, Western officials and mainstream media are ramping up attacks on the endeavor. Western commentators are united in condemnation, ranging from fear-mongering over China’s role to disparaging the plan’s viability. Consistently, they dismiss it as “the highway to nowhere,” implying foolishness on the part of Montenegro and presenting it as a cautionary tale on the dangers of doing business with China. The theme fits neatly within the framework of Washington’s campaign to economically isolate and cripple China, its main competitor in the global economy.

“One of the world’s most expensive roads,” the New York Times informs us, has reached “its destination: a muddy field outside a hamlet with a few dozen houses, many of them empty.” [1] It is an image meant to invite contempt. Never mind that this is the endpoint of one stage of the project, and the plan is to continue construction of the highway; it is better to repeat as a mantra, “the highway to nowhere.” Like a steady drumbeat, Western ridicule is relentless and unvarying: Montenegro has launched a “megalomaniac project” that serves no useful purpose, taking on debt of monstrous proportions in the process.

Western officials warn that China has captured Montenegro in a “debt trap” that will allow it to wield undue influence over Montenegro’s policies and seize control of territory or infrastructure. Moreover, it is argued that the debt to the Export-Import (Exim) Bank of China is unsustainable. The New York Times reports that Montenegro “is now saddled with debts to China that total more than a third of the government’s annual budget.” [2] The impression given is one of unsustainable excess, and that would be so were the entire debt due to be repaid in a single year. A closer look at the details of the loan shows how misleading the Times article is.

The initial interest rate on the Exim Bank of China loan was 2%, and former Montenegrin President Filip Vujanović reports that the loan terms “were by far the most favorable, and no bank or financial organization could match them.” [3] However, Western media warn that the loan totals $1 billion, which is due and cannot be repaid.

Although Montenegro is not a member of the European Union, it relies on the Euro for its currency. However, Exim Bank of China’s loan required payments to be denominated in U.S. dollars. To be precise, the agreement that Montenegro signed in 2014 with Exim Bank of China covers up to a maximum of $944 million, which is €796 million at today’s exchange rate. The contract established between the Chinese construction company building the highway and the Ministry of Transport and Maritime has a fixed conversion rate. However, the fluctuating value of the Euro against the dollar has added to the cost. [4] The loan is in the form of a draw-down, which means that the government can access money in installments on an as-needed basis while construction proceeds.

The latest Montenegrin government statistics show that the actual loan balance, as of the end of 2020, is €640 million. [5] Under terms of the 2014 loan, Exim Bank is responsible for financing 85 percent of the project’s first phase. A six-year grace period was provided, which Montenegro took advantage of, and a 20-year repayment schedule. This year, Montenegro made its first annual loan repayment, amounting to €27.79 million. [6] Far from having a ruinous economic impact that is destroying the economy, that amount accounts for a mere 1.5% of the government’s annual budget of €1.88 billion.[7]

Objections are also expressed over the amount of the Chinese loan relative to the size of the national economy. It is said that the loan has sent the nation’s GDP/debt ratio “soaring” to stratospheric levels, far beyond the norm. The latest figure for Montenegro’s GDP/debt ratio stands at 103%. [8] That is, the nation is carrying more debt than its gross domestic product. Taken at face value, this would seem an unsustainable burden, as Western reports would have us believe.

A comprehensive comparison reveals a different picture, though. On the international scene, Montenegro’s GDP/debt ratio is not unusual. Statistics for 2020 show Japan leading the pack at 266%, and several other countries exceed Montenegro’s standing, including the United States at 131%. [9] When only Montenegro is singled out, a different impression is given than reality suggests.

One question never asked is to what extent the loan from Exim Bank of China is responsible for Montenegro’s supposed predicament. We are led to believe that this loan is single-handedly responsible for a mountainous debt load. You will never see it pointed out in mainstream media, but the Chinese loan accounts for only 15% of Montenegro’s GDP/debt ratio. Montenegro’s Eurobond debt is more than triple that. There are also several loans from Western financial institutions, which cumulatively easily surpass the amount of the Chinese loan. [10]

Is it plausible to claim that there is something uniquely unsustainable about 15% of Montenegro’s debt because its origin is Chinese? Or that concern over debt should focus on that single loan while ignoring the primarily Western loans comprising the remaining 85%? It would appear that Western resentment over Chinese competition is driving this narrative.

Whether the impact of the loan is measured against the national budget or the GDP/debt ratio, the standard narrative is misleading either way. So in the latter case, the €27.79 million that Montenegro paid this year to Exim Bank of China amounts to less than one percent of its GDP, hardly a crushing weight. [11]

An oft-repeated canard is that China seized the port of Hambantota as collateral when Sri Lanka ran into difficulties in making loan payments. The lesson imparted is of the danger involved in taking out a loan from a Chinese bank. But, as usual in Western reports, assertion substitutes for evidence. Chinese banks have never grabbed an asset from another country and have often reduced interest rates or written off debts when a nation has run into difficulties. Nor is it true that China grabbed the port of Hambantota. [12]

Montenegro’s government was eager to modify the loan terms, and Exim Bank of China generously agreed to reduce the interest rate to 0.8%. [13] Montenegro also struck a hedging deal with Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, Merrill Lynch, and Goldman Sachs that provides a cross-currency swap, allowing the nation to make loan payments in Euros rather than dollars to eliminate the potential impact of fluctuating rates.[14]

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Palmer regularly visits the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, urging the government to exercise “caution” in its dealings with China. [15] In an interview on the Montenegrin news station Televizija Vijesti, Palmer praised the hedging deal the nation reached with Western firms as a demonstration of “fiscal responsibility” and progress on “limiting the ability of outside actors, in this case China in particular, from making mischief.” He added, “China around the world employs this kind of debt-trap diplomacy to get countries on the hook for obligations that they’re not in a position to finance and then use that as leverage to extract political concessions.” [16] American officials are prone to such wild accusations, which generally serve as imprecations rather than statements of fact. Responding to Palmer’s defamations, Chinese Foreign Minister Spokesperson Zhao Lijian pointed out, “The true intention behind the false accusation of ‘debt trap’ is to sow discord between China and relevant countries.” [17]

The United States and European Union sense an opportunity to muscle in on China’s presence in Montenegro, thereby sending a message to the rest of the Western Balkans. A source familiar with the debt negotiations reveals that the plan is that once the hedge agreement was reached, talks would likely continue with the aim of having Western financial institutions refinance the entire loan and take Exim Bank of China out of the picture. [18] Montenegrin Finance Minister Milojko Spajić says that the hedging deal “was an intermediate step towards refinancing.” [19]

It seems unlikely that any Western loan could match Exim Bank of China’s reduced interest rate of 0.8%. But then, Montenegro may not have much maneuvering space if it wants to remain on the path to EU membership.

Although Montenegro is the only European country without a highway, we are taught that this endeavor is unnecessary, and money is being thrown away. Construction of the road is proceeding in three phases, the first of which is scheduled to be completed by the end of November. When the final phase is done, a modern 164-kilometer highway will connect Montenegro’s port of Bar on the Adriatic coast with the Serbian village of Boljare on the border. From there, Montenegro will link to the rest of the Balkans and Central Europe.

The China Road and Bridge Corporation is leading the first phase, the 41-km Smokovac-Mateševo section, which is the most technically difficult. The cost-per-kilometer is often disapprovingly remarked upon in Western reports. We are led to question why this section of highway should be expensive. However, this is no ordinary road. The terrain the builders must contend with is suggested by Montenegro’s name — Crna Gora, meaning ‘Black Mountain,’ and known in the English-speaking world by the Spanish equivalent.

Tunnels had to be blasted through mountains and bridges built to span deep chasms. In all, bridges and tunnels account for 60% of this section of the road.[20] The Moračica Bridge is one of the tallest in the world, [21] requiring 100,000 cubic meters of concrete, 15,000 tons of reinforcement, and 2,000 tons of cables. [22] It makes for an imposing sight.

The Vjeternik tunnel presented a particular challenge. According to engineer Lazar Smolović, “Half a million cubic meters of earth and stone were excavated.” [23] Chinese engineer Wang Xinwei explains that the greatest difficultywas dealing with around one hundred karst caves discovered during tunneling. [24] According to an observer, these subterranean caves had to be filled with concrete. He noted the difficulty the construction team faced in working at high altitudes and strong winter winds. As he rather poetically put it, “Across the mountains and karst, and through the canyons and plateaus, where only goats and donkeys could fight their way through the centuries, today’s Chinese builders are building” the first section of the highway. [25]

When completed, the road will include 48 tunnels and 107 bridges and viaducts, traversing some of the most challenging terrains in the Balkans. [26] View this engineering marvel or even the Moračica Bridge alone, and ask how intellectually honest Western reporters are when they jeeringly question why this highway should have a price tag on the higher end when ordinary roads cost so much less.

The remaining two sections of the highway will be considerably easier and cheaper to tackle. Despite the New York Times sarcastically describing the initial section as “petering out in the middle of a largely uninhabited forest,” implying that it serves no purpose, it will be put to immediate use all along its 41 kilometers. This section of the road will also enable the government to launch its plan to develop the northern region, where plentiful natural resources have been essentially inaccessible up to now. [27]

It is incorrect to suggest that the first phase of the highway is any measure of the costs to be expected going forward. Nor is it accurate to maintain, as the New York Times does, that there are “no funds available to extend it” while the first phase is still underway. On the contrary. Finance Minister Milojko Spajić has announced that funds are available to continue the project, and Montenegro plans to call a tender for the two easier sections by the end of this year. [28]

Another charge frequently hurled at the China Road and Bridge Corporation is that it missed the deadline for completing work on the Smokovac-Mateševo section, resulting in a contract extension that demonstrates the unreliability of China as a business partner. Unmentioned is any indication of the reasons for the schedule change. Covid-19 severely hampered progress in terms of labor shortages and supply disruptions, not uniquely so on the world stage. [29] Also, as work progressed, the need for additional construction, water, and electrical supply was discovered. [30]

We are told that the China Road and Bridge Corporation is taking all the money back to China, while Balkan companies and workers are excluded from involvement. This is yet another accusation made without foundation. The Montenegrin civil engineering firm Bemax plays a significant role, as do other companies, including the Serbian firm Titan Cement. As for the exclusion of local and regional workers, the contractor’s report from May shows that of 1,131 personnel, only 34% are from China. [31]

Western reports argue that the highway makes no economic sense for Montenegro, as tolls from anticipated traffic from Serbia and elsewhere cannot possibly compensate the project’s expense. Montenegro has never claimed otherwise. An international bond prospectus issued by the government of Montenegro on the London Stock Exchange declares, “It is expected that in the longer term, approximately half of the [highway] project’s expenditures will be covered from road toll fee revenues.” [32] This is not negligible, but the highway has far broader significance for Montenegro and the Balkans.

Indeed, one could argue that toll fares comprise the least of considerations. Montenegro’s economic development is heavily concentrated along its coastal region, leaning heavily on the tourist trade. Due to the pandemic’s near-total elimination of tourism, the economy contracted by 15 percent last year, illustrating the nation’s need for economic diversification. [33] Moreover, the lack of adequate roads has a disparate impact in the country’s northern region, where the unemployment rate is more than six times that of the coastal area. [34] Completing the highway, the government reports, should more evenly balance economic development and reduce the heavy population outmigration from the northern region. [35]

Improved transportation should also accelerate agricultural development in the mountainous area, where market access is constrained. [36] The European Project management Journal reports, “In the north, the road from Podgorica to Kolašin through the Morača canyon and continuing onto Serbia is considered the bottleneck of Montenegrin road network, as it is a curvy mountainous road, often unsafe during the winter.” Completing the highway, it continues, “will result in more equitable development of Montenegro” and “enable greater and safer mobility of people, goods, and services.” [37]

Montenegro will also more fully integrate with the rest of Europe. Associated plans include the modernization of the Bar-Belgrade railway, which is currently in poor condition. [38] Additional rail projects are envisioned, and Montenegro intends to increase capacity at the port of Bar and develop the port industrial complex. [39] The government says that the highway is expected to “allow for increased exports from the landlocked countries in the region (such as Serbia, Montenegro’s largest trading partner)” and significantly increase the amount of freight passing through the port of Bar. It is also anticipated that “facilitating access to regional markets and decreased direct purchase costs” should improve the business environment. [40]

The Bar-Boljare highway links Montenegro to the Pan-European Corridor XI, running from the Adriatic port of Bar to Belgrade and Bucharest, Romania, and including a ferry connection to Bari, Italy. In addition, the corridor will connect with Pan-European Corridor X, involving several Balkan nations and running from Salzburg, Austria, to the Greek port of Thessaloniki on the Aegean. [41] According to the European Union’s Western Balkans Investment Framework, the Bar-Boljare highway “will link the ports on the Adriatic Sea to those on the Danube” and provide “the shortest connection from Hungary and Romania through Serbia and Montenegro to southern Italy and Albania.” [42] The potential economic benefits, not only for Montenegro but the region as a whole, are enormous. To reduce the question of profitability, as Western critics do, to a simple matter of toll revenues on Serbia-Montenegro traffic is misleading in the extreme. The impact of the highway and related enterprises promises to be nothing less than transformational. Washington cannot be happy about any of this and has repeatedly advised Montenegro against the highway or doing business with China.

Western lending institutions have been resistant to providing support. Having failed to prevent Montenegro from starting construction, advisors are trying to convince the government to set aside plans to proceed with the subsequent two phases. The IMF is typical in warning Montenegro “that caution is needed in implementing the next phases of the Bar-Boljare highway project until feasibility, cost-benefit analyses, and financing issues are fully addressed.” Moreover, public-private partnership arrangements “should be approached with caution to reduce the risk of assuming significant contingent fiscal liabilities.” More bluntly, the IMF advised Montenegro that it has better things to do with its money and to “weigh the benefits of the Bar-Boljare highway project,” with its “low economic return on the overall highway, based on limited potential for toll revenues relative to cost.” [43] The focus on tolls alone is so wrong-headed that one wonders if Western financial institutions are being deliberately obtuse as a means of discouraging Chinese involvement. Similar admonishments from Western financial institutions preceded the launch of the first phase of highway construction. Montenegro’s challenge may be in finding a willing partner that Washington finds acceptable. The United States can be counted upon to exert every effort to block Montenegro from continuing its partnership with China. Whether the United States can succeed in stopping the project altogether or limiting its scope remains to be seen. The Montenegrin government is keen on joining the European Union, and numerous conditions have been put in its path. However, the highway could potentially prove to be another hurdle.Shortly after last year’s election in Montenegro, but before the new government took power, U.S. diplomat Matthew Palmer stated that among other things, “we expect the next government…to cooperate well and closely with the United States.” [44] Neither a partnership with the Chinese nor completion of the highway fits in that picture. Montenegro is ensnared in the U.S. war on China. By around the end of the year, the first phase of the highway will become operational, and Montenegro will stand at a crossroads. The Bar-Boljare highway project has advanced too far, and the potential benefits are too great for it to be readily abandoned. At the same time, imperialism has many ways to inflict pain on a small wayward nation. Will Montenegro leap into the future and see the highway project through to completion, or will it bend to pressure and allow Washington to hinder its development?

Notes.

[1] Andrew Higgins, “A Pricey Drive Down Montenegro’s Highway ‘From Nowhere to Nowhere’”, New York Times, August 14, 2021.
[2] Andrew Higgins, “A Pricey Drive Down Montenegro’s Highway ‘From Nowhere to Nowhere’”, New York Times, August 14, 2021.
[3] Filip Vujanović, “Accusing China of Creating ‘Debt Trap’ for Montenegro Groundless,” Belt & Road News, April 22, 2021.
[4] “Although the loan facility does not include a fixed U.S. Dollar/euro exchange rate, the construction agreement between the CRBC and the Ministry of Transport and Maritime includes a fixed U.S. Dollar/euro exchange rate of $1.3718 to €1.00.” https://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/2057L_-2018-4-17.pdf
[5] “Report on the General Government Debt of Montenegro, as of December 31, 2020,” Montenegro Ministry of Finance and Social Welfare.
[6] Radomir Ralev, “Montenegro Pays First Installment of China’s Exim Bank Loan – Report,” SeeNews, July 21, 2021.
[7] Radomir Ralev, “Montenegro’s Govt Adopts 2021 Draft Budget with 3%/GDP Deficit,” SeeNews, March 31, 2021.
[8] “Report on the General Government Debt of Montenegro, as of December 31, 2020,” Montenegro Ministry of Finance and Social Welfare.
[9] https://www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/public-debt-percentage-gdp
[10] “Report on the General Government Debt of Montenegro, as of December 31, 2020,” Montenegro Ministry of Finance and Social Welfare.
[11] “Report on the General Government Debt of Montenegro, as of December 31, 2020,” Montenegro Ministry of Finance and Social Welfare. Note on bottom of page 3 provides the GDP for 2020 as 4,193 million Euros.
[12] Kevin Acker, Deborah Brautigan, Yufan Huang, “Debt Relief with Chinese Characteristics,” China-Africa Research Initiative, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, June 2020. Deborah Brautigan and Meg Rithmire, “The Chinese ‘Debt Trap’ Is a Myth,’ The Atlantic, February 6, 2021.
[13] Predrag Milić, “Spajić: Vlada Sa Kineskom Bankom Dogovorila Smanjenje Kamate Na Dug Za Autoput,” Voice of America, July 8, 2021.
[14] Nikola Đorđević, “Montenegro Narrowly Avoids Chinese Debt Trap, for Now,” Emerging Europe, August 9, 2021.
[15] https://twitter.com/usembassymne/status/1413142985210941448
[16] https://ms-my.facebook.com/montenegro.usembassy/videos/das-palmer-tv-vijesti-interview/514085246479986/
[17] “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian’s Regular Press Conference on July 13, 2021,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China,” July 13, 2021.
[18] Guy Faulconbridge, “Montenegro Close to Deal on Lifting Chinese Debt Burden – Minister,” Reuters, July 7, 2021.
[19] “Montenegro Agrees Hedging Deals to Ease Chinese Debt Burden – Report,” Reuters, July 21, 2021.
[20] https://www.crbc.com/site/crbcEN/77884/info/2015/46840520.html
[21] http://www.highestbridges.com/wiki/index.php?title=Moracica_Bridge
[22] “Спојен мост Морачица, завршетак до марта 2020,” Politika, October 11, 2019.
[23] Veliša Kadić, “Морачица мост за понос,” Večernje Novosti, July 14, 2017.
[24] https://m.cdm.me/english/1600-metres-vjeternik-tunnelled/
[25] https://alexsrb.livejournal.com/396102.html
[26] https://waytomonte.com/en/n-615-novost-47
[27] Filip Vujanović, “Accusing China of Creating ‘Debt Trap’ for Montenegro Groundless,” Belt & Road News, April 22, 2021.
[28] “Montenegro’s Chinese-funded Highway to Replace ‘Death Road,” Reuters, June 1, 2021.
[29] https://www.cdm.me/english/bar-boljare-motorway-project-380-chinese-workers-returned-to-montenegro
[30] Z. Zorić, “ПЕНАЛИ ИЛИ ПРОДУЖЕТАК: Кинези поднели захтев да им се одобри одлагање завршетка ауто-пута,” October 6, 2020.
[31] “ЗАВРШЕНО 95 ПОСТО РАДОВА: За ауто-пут Бар – Бољаре до сада плаћено 700 милиона евра,” Večernje Novosti, June 25, 2021.
[32] https://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/2057L_-2018-4-17.pdf
[33] “Western Balkans Regular Economic Report No.19: Subdued Recovery,” World Bank, Spring 2021.
[34] “Montenegro 2020 Report,” European Commission, October 6, 2020.
[35] “Detaljnog Prostornog Plana Autoputa: Bar-Boljare,” Montenegro Ministry of Economic Development, August, 2008.
[36] “Detaljnog Prostornog Plana Autoputa: Bar-Boljare,” Montenegro Ministry of Economic Development, August, 2008.
[37] Sanja Međedović and Michael Ellis, “A Project Management Approach to a Highway Construction in Montenegro,” European Project Management Journal, Volume 7, Issue 1, December 2017.
[38] “Bojanić: Crna Gora će Predložiti Srbiji Zajedničku Gradnju Autoputa,” Vijesti, April 12, 2021.
[39] “Detaljnog Prostornog Plana Autoputa: Bar-Boljare,” Montenegro Ministry of Economic Development, August, 2008.
[40] https://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/2057L_-2018-4-17.pdf
[41] https://www.worldhighways.com/wh8/news/serbia-and-china-discuss-preljina-boljare-section-corridor-xi
[42] https://www.wbif.eu/project/PRJ-MNE-TRA-006
[43] “IMF Country Report No. 19/293: Montenegro Article IV Consultation,” IMF, September, 2019.
[44] https://m.cdm.me/english/palmer-about-montenegro-we-expect-people-who-are-committed-to-the-nato-agenda-to-be-in-key-ministries/

counterpunch.org

The outgoing “high commissioner” of Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina Valentin Inzko’s Parthian shot threatens to unravel the restless raj he has haughtily ruled since 2009, amply rewarded for his generous efforts with an annual salary of half a million euros.

For several years Inzko has been threatening to impose in Bosnia a “Srebrenica genocide denial” law, relying on his presumed prerogatives under the Dayton peace agreement, unless that is the local lawmakers got his hint and passed the prescribed law motu propio. But of course as a lawyer Inzko should be well aware that in conditions of coercion there can be no motu propio. That knowledge did not prevent him, however, precisely from the exercise of coercion just days before his heartily desired departure, as if he deliberately wanted the coda to his rule to symbolize the general lawlessness of his office ever since it was set up in 1996, supposedly as a temporary measure to facilitate peace and reconciliation in a strife riven land. In the event, the “temporary measure” making Bosnia a full-fledged NATO protectorate has been in effect for a quarter of a century, and with no end in sight, but with increasingly determined resistance by Security Council members Russia and China.

Inzko’s decree was just another in a long train of routine humiliations for the supposedly independent and sovereign state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Like all previous occupiers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Inzko and his NATO brethren have found the Serb element a very hard nut to crack. In the present situation, the contentious issue is the foreign cabal’s insistence that Bosnian Serbs, whose political embodiment is one of the country’s two entities, the Republic of Srpska, humbly admit that they committed genocide on their Muslim neighbours in July of 1995. Either that, or stop denying that they did, which is practically the same thing. Except for some usual suspects from the ranks of local Western-financed NGOs few takers have been found, which infuriates the international overseers immensely. Moreover, due to Bosnia’s post-Dayton constitutional structure a “national interest” issue such as this cannot be given legislative effect without a consensus of all three constituent ethnic groups. Republic of Srpska’s determined opposition to the self-incriminating Srebrenica genocide denial initiative has effectively squashed all attempts to pass such a law using regular legislative procedures. That is when “high representative” Inzko stepped in to do the job.

Pointedly, Milorad Dodik, the Serbian representative in Bosnia’s collective presidency, commented that the imposition of this law is the “final nail in the coffin” of the failed state of Bosnia. (He would have said “the final straw” had he been talking in English, which he does not speak.) He was obviously alluding to the title of a book by Bosnian Serb academic, Prof. Nenad Kecmanovic, “Bosnia, the impossible state,” which takes a very dim view of its subject’s viability.

The principal points in the current controversy are the unreasonably long persistence of the office of the “high representative” in Bosnia (supposedly he “represents” the European Union, of which Bosnia is not even a member) and the actual extent of his powers.

Putting and keeping their man on the vice-regal throne in Sarajevo (individual officials have changed over the last 25 years but the general political direction of their office has invariably remained the same) is invested with obvious geostrategic logic, which is to secure the empire’s Balkan rear for the Ostfront, when the time to open it is deemed ripe. In the meantime, by hook and by crook the empire and its local “high representatives” have pursued obstinately three single-minded goals. These are to dismantle the loose confederation agreed upon in Dayton in favor of a centralised state ruled by their satraps from Sarajevo, to incorporate Bosnia into the crumbling European Union, and to make it join the NATO alliance. A fundamental obstacle to the achievement of all those goals is an empowered Republic of Srpska, with its stubbornly retrograde population whose unanimous affections in their entirety flow in the opposite direction, to … well, you know who, but it is neither Brussels, London nor Washington.

In that context, the actual powers under the Dayton peace agreement of the “high representative,” whose task is to make all the above happen, are a core issue. Those powers, it seems, have largely been based on an insolent bluff, the so-called “Bonn powers” supposedly delivered to the Bosnian viceroy at a meeting of Western Alliance officials in Germany in the late 90s, much akin to the fraudulent Donatio Constantini and other similar medieval swindles. The entire fraudulent scheme was debunked in detail and with great effectiveness by British academic John Laughland some time ago. But alas! Balkan politicians do not seem to have grasped Dr. Laughland’s memo because they are not very fluent in English. Besides, their not wholly unjustified inferiority complex makes them susceptible to the most preposterous claims, especially when they are delivered by stern Western officials in pin striped suits, to whose impertinent demands “Yes, bwana” is always the only possible answer.

Inzko’s imposition in Bosnia of a country-wide Srebrenica genocide denial law, in clear defiance of the Serb half of the country, is already provoking exactly the sort of destabilising reactions that were probably envisaged by those who inspired it. There is talk of the Serb entity walking out of Bosnia and Herzegovina, not recognising the credentials of Inzko’s successor, not enforcing Inzko’s arbitrary decree on its territory, and so forth. In short, the planned exacerbation of Bosnia’s permanent crisis has so far been an outstanding success.

Add to that the recent “Srebrenica denial” spat in neighbouring Montenegro which further undermined the already wobbly post-Djukanovic government and the campaign in Serbia, clearly inspired by Western services and their agents of influence, to further discredit the unsavoury current regime and nudge it closer to recognizing Kosovo secession in return for a let-up on the political pressure, and all the ingredients for a toxic Balkan brew have been assembled.

A “Balkan Spring,” perhaps a bit late in the year, but probably welcome any time, may well be in the early implementation stage. It is difficult to conceive that all the elements of a perfect storm in the three central Balkans statelets have been planted fortuitously, without the guidance of a single strategic concept or operational centre.

The weekend of March 27-28, thousands of vehicles from neighboring countries formed lines waiting to enter Serbia. The reason? Vaccines. For free. Lots of them, from both East and West. Sputnik V, Sinopharm, AstraZeneca, Pfizer. More than the rest of the ex-Yugoslav republics combined. And Serbia decided to open its doors to those among its former compatriots who have lost all hope that their Western-approved “democracies” would obtain them in respectable quantities any time soon.

So, does this humane gesture make Serbia a white hat in Western eyes? Of course not. Silly question. Did the saintly Western democracies spend all those years and millions in demonizing the region’s largest and most influential country only to blithely give up the divide et impera policy so successfully applied during the dismantling of ex-Yugoslavia? Just because lives are at stake? Another silly question. Come on, this is the zero-sum West we’re talking about. The world is divided into winners and losers. Those that obey, even at their own expense, are the “good guys,” and those that don’t – are not. “Win-win” is not an option.

In fact, the collective West is busy showing this spring just what it thinks of Serbia’s determination to conduct an independent, multilateral and – egads! – pro-multipolar policy through an old-fashioned show of force. In a rare journalistic display of directness, the EU-related EURACTIV news site ran the following headline announcing the entire enterprise: “NATO, U.S. to stage large-scale military exercises around Serbia until summer.” The accompanying map of the Defender-Europe 21 operation, as it is officially called, is even more to the point, eerily recalling the encirclement of Yugoslavia by Axis forces in April 1941. Hard to find clearer messaging that that.

Imagine if the 30,000 or so soldiers slated to participate in the event were instead deployed to deliver vaccines and mobile field hospitals to the virus-stricken region. But it seems that the Serbian pro-multipolar “virus” is raising more alarm in Western capitals than the actual pandemic. And it needs to be contained, or at least isolated. Can’t have the entire region weaning itself off the neoliberal, er… democratic teat and start looking collectively in any other direction but due West, can we?

Consider the recently adopted European Parliament resolution on Serbia, especially its “concerns” regarding the country’s efforts to pursue balanced external relations:

“77. [The EP] Expresses concern about China’s increasing influence in Serbia and across the Western Balkans and the lack of transparency and environmental and social impact assessment of Chinese investments and loans; calls on Serbia to strengthen its legal compliance standards for Chinese business activities;

“87. Reiterates the importance of alignment with the EU common foreign and security policy (CFSP), which must progressively become an integral part of Serbia’s foreign policy as a condition for the accession process; expresses concern about Serbia’s alignment rate, which is the lowest in the region; notes that some government officials and some politicians continue to make occasional statements that call into question Serbia’s foreign policy orientation; is concerned by Serbia’s repeated support for Russia in the UN General Assembly over the annexation of Crimea;

“88. Welcomes the fact that Serbia aligned with the EU’s position on the presidential elections in Belarus; remains concerned, however, that Serbia has failed to align with the sanctioning of Belarusian officials and with the EU’s position on the new security law in China; calls on Serbia to increase its level of alignment with the declarations of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on behalf of the EU, and with Council decisions;

“98. Expresses concern over Serbia’s increasing dependence on defence and security  equipment and technologies from the People’s Republic of China, including a mass surveillance system in Belgrade and mass personal data collection without appropriate safeguards, and the insufficient transparency of the security sector’s public procurement practices; continues to be concerned about Serbia’s close political and military cooperation with Russia, including the continued presence of Russian air facilities in Niš; calls on Serbia to align with the CSDP and its instruments…”

Add to this the periodic calls for NATO to wrap up its “unfinished business” in the Balkans, or the constant stream of “concern” with Russian or Chinese “malign influence” in the region, and the picture of the never-ending Western obsession with Serbia and its stubborn independent streak becomes complete.

Recently, the country marked the 22^nd anniversary of the beginning of NATO’s illegal “humanitarian” intervention against ex-Yugoslavia, which took an untold human(itarian) and, yes, ecological, toll on Serbia’s population. Unlike the totally unrepentant West, both Russia and China made sure to call this Western campaign by its real name – “aggression” – and made a public show of solidarity with Serbia. This was especially the case with the Chinese defense minister Wei Fenghe, whose three-day visit to Serbia, fortuitously coinciding with the anniversary, also provided the opportunity for China to send some unequivocal messages of its own.

As he laid wreaths at the site of the Chinese embassy “accidentally” bombed by a U.S. B-2 “stealth” bomber on May 7, 1999, when three Chinese journalists were killed and 20 people injured, Wei stated that “the Chinese military will never allow history to repeat itself as China is capable and determined to defend its national interests.” For her part, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying added that NATO “still owes blood debt” to the Chinese people and that “it shall not be forgotten that the U.S.-led NATO blatantly bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 in a severe violation of relevant international conventions and basic norms of international relations.”

In fact, there is ample proof that NATO’s 78-day attack on Serbia and Montenegro was not the least bit “humanitarian” in its purpose but had an ice-cold geopolitical raison. Perhaps the key public proof of this was provided by Willy Wimmer, former member of the German Bundestag and Vice President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, in a letter written to then German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on May 2, 2000, or less than a year after NATO’s illegal operation.

Wimmer’s 11-point brief of what was said at a closed security conference organized in Bratislava by the U.S. State Department included the following key points:

“4. The war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was waged in order to rectify General Eisenhower’s erroneous decision during World War II. Therefore, for strategic reasons, American troops must be stationed there, in order to compensate for the missed opportunity from 1945.

“7. It would be good, during NATO’s current enlargement, to restore the territorial situation in the area between the Baltic Sea and Anatolia such as existed during the Roman Empire, at the time of its greatest power and greatest territorial expansion.

“8. For this reason, Poland must be flanked to the north and to the south with democratic neighbor states, while Romania and Bulgaria are to secure a land connection with Turkey. Serbia (probably for the purposes of securing an unhindered U.S. military presence) must be permanently excluded from European development.

“11. The claim that, during its attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, NATO violated all international rules, and especially all the relevant provisions of international law – was not disputed.”

No less devastating was the experienced German diplomat’s own conclusion:

“It seems that the American side, for the sake of its own goals, is willing and ready to undermine, on a global scale, the international legal order, which came about as a result of the two world wars in the previous century. Force is to stand above law. Wherever international law stands in the way, it is to be removed.

“When the League of Nations experienced a similar fate, World War II was not far off. The manner of thought that takes into regard solely its own interests can only be referred to as totalitarian.”

This is the stuff for some future iteration of the Nuremberg trials, where the crime of aggression was identified as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” For now, it can at least serve as a handy tool in the current global info war, another reminder of the foreign policy roots of some of the self-styled moral crusaders staffing the Biden Administration, such as Anthony Blinken, who openly invokes the reprehensible Madeleine Albright as a “role model.”

So, if having a war of aggression named after you and causing the death of half a million Iraqi children was “worth it” in Albright’s mind, the untold millions being spent in efforts at eradicating all traces of multipolarity from European soil, instead of helping alleviate the region’s health crisis, are most certainly “worth it” in the minds of her political and spiritual successors in the White House and across the Atlantic.

In any case, the situation in and around Serbia, Europe’s most stubborn multipolar outpost, is bound to heat up in the near future.

The August 30 parliamentary elections in this coastal former Yugoslav republic of some 620,000 people brought electoral defeat to the party of Montenegrin strongman and current president Milo Djukanovic for the first time in some 30 years. This was proclaimed by some as the long-awaited fall of the Berlin Wall in that country, seeing that the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists (DPS) had seamlessly evolved from the League of Communists of Montenegro at the beginning of the 1990s, thus making its rule basically uninterrupted since the communist takeover of Yugoslavia in 1945. On September 23, the three opposition lists that won a narrow 41 seat majority in the 81-seat parliament elected the parliament’s new president and formally proposed the leader of the “For the Future of Montenegro” list, mechanical engineering professor Zdravko Krivokapic, as the new prime minister. Djukanovic has 30 days to offer him the mandate to form a government. In theory, he can offer it to someone else, but only Krivokapic has secured a majority. In any case, a new government must be either confirmed by parliament within 90 days or new elections called.

However, while to the casual observer the “Montenegrin Spring” appears to be in full bloom, it seems that some things are not open to democratic or any other debate after all. In the first place, the country’s pro-Western course, most importantly its NATO membership, EU integration path and the recognition of Serbia’s breakaway Kosovo province. Which tells us much about where we have arrived some three decades after the West’s proclaimed victory in the Cold War, and Fukuyama’s annunciation of the “end of history” and the final victory of “liberal democracy.”

Of course, there are no NATO troops concentrating at the Montenegrin border, no overt threats of foreign armed intervention – yet. Which is not to say that there are no threats at all. In fact, Djukanovic, a recent winner of the “Person of the Year in Organized Crime” award, has threatened violence twice in the space of several days, just in case the new government should decide to stray from the “correct” path.

In a recent interview for Sarajevo’s FACE TV, after speaking approvingly of the new majority’s assurances that the country would not veer from its westward course, Djukanovic nevertheless warned that he was prepared to defend Montenegro “from the woods if necessary,” invoking the country’s long history of armed resistance to attacks on its “statehood.” He also threatened to “demolish” any stone used to build a new church in the old capital of Cetinje – which was clearly an arrow aimed at the Serbian Orthodox Church, which led the mass resistance to Djukanovic’s Orwellian “Law on Religious Freedom” that turned out to be driving force behind his party’s election loss.

Djukanovic reiterated his threat in another interview several days later, throwing in, for good measure, the usual westward-directed virtue signaling and scaremongering about the Russian and Serbian threat to Montenegrin statehood and all that is great and good in the world.

What should be noted here is not just Djukanovic’s ominous rhetoric but the uniform silence with which it has been greeted by Western embassies and capitals, otherwise quick to detect and decry phantom Russian (and, locally, Serbian) threats at the drop of a hat. Which shows that the new parliamentary majority will be under the watchful eye of Brussels, Washington, London, Paris and Berlin, who are still counting on Djukanovic, warts and all, as a viable insurance policy just in case Montenegrins start getting some ideas of their own about how to run their country and start taking democratic choice a tad too seriously.

So, while Djukanovic is allowed to casually sling threats of violence from the sidelines, ready to pounce at his opponents’ slightest misstep, the new democratically elected majority is compelled to offer endless pledges of fealty to the country’s “unalterable” pro-Western course. Note, for example, the inquisitorial tone of a question posed to Krivokapic in a recent Deutsche Welle interview: “Djukanovic has distanced himself from Milosevic, declared Montenegro’s independence, supported EU sanctions against Russia, recognized Kosovo and entered NATO. How will you convince Brussels and Washington that you will not change his Western-supported foreign policy course, which is not supported by your own supporters, especially the pro-Serbian and pro-Russian parties in coalition with you?”

Naturally, Krivokapic assured his interrogator that neither he nor his political partners had any intention of straying from the Washington/Brussels party line or path, pointing to their coalition agreement as proof. In a nutshell, to quote Brezhnev’s famous policy speech given to Polish workers in November 1968, Krivokapic and company assured Western comrades that “none of their decisions should damage either socialism democracy in their country or the fundamental interests of other socialist democratic countries, and the whole working class democratic movement, which is working for socialism democracy.”

And, taking no chances, in a subsequent article written for the Washington Times, Krivokapic additionally reassured the Westintern that the new majority’s three-way agreement “guaranteed not only to maintain Montenegro’s commitment to NATO membership but to deepen our place in the alliance; and we pledged to accelerate reforms that can take our country into the European Union.”

In his defense, this approach is basically understandable, as Krivokapic and his partners are well aware of all the obstacles they will face tackling their most important challenges, which are of an internal nature – deconstructing Djukanovic’s corrupt political machine, opening up the media for diverse political views, ending anti-Serb discrimination, voiding or amending the afore-mentioned Law on Religious Freedom, reforming the judicial system and coming to terms with the country’s high indebtedness and rising unemployment, exacerbated by the destruction of the tourist season as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But of course, even internally, we can be sure that the neo-Brezhnevite guardians of Western “fundamental interests” will be closely watching for any kind of opening to Russian, Serbian or Chinese “malign influence,” even if it might be economically beneficial to this impoverished country. That’s where Krivokapic may run into trouble down the road as, set-in-stone foreign policy pledges notwithstanding, he has also unequivocally stated that Serbia and Montenegro are “the closest of states,” that “the Russian Federation is our brotherly country and great, centuries-long friend” and that he and his political allies are “obliged to repair our political relations with Russia, as well as Serbia.” He also did not neglect to remind that Djukanovic had granted recognition to so-called Kosovo despite the fact that, quoting Montenegro’s outgoing prime minister, “85% of Montenegro’s citizens were against the recognition of Serbia’s southern province.” In the eyes of the Westintern, such views are doubtlessly seen as double-plus-ungood.

Which means that more “pro-democratic” reinforcements are bound to be brought in, such as the former commander of U.S. forces in Europe, Ben Hodges. In a recent interview for the pro-Djukanovic Pobjeda daily, Hodges, now an associate of the neocon CEPA Washington think tank, gently reminded the future government that it is “expected to fulfill its NATO obligations,” while sending the usual barrage of unsubstantiated accusations Russia’s way, covering everything from using “force, disinformation and poison” to being responsible for Syria’s refugee crisis and other similar nonsense.

In observing the situation in Montenegro, the words of former England striker Gary Lineker come to mind, “Football is a simple game – 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.” What the collective West seems to be saying to Montenegrins these days is, “Democracy is a simple game – the people cast their ballots on election day and at the end, NATO and the EU always win. Or else…”

Behind the new Democratic Curtain, the Brezhnev Doctrine has found new life.

The outcome of the electoral contest is ambiguous, as most things are in the Balkans. The ruling pro-Western DPS Party (ironically, the acronym stands for “Democratic Party of Socialists” which is the successor to the former League of Communists), if we are to go by the official count, obtained a plurality of the votes, about 35%. (Of course, this generous percentage might be modified somewhat by factoring in reported widespread fraud which, according to some persuasive estimates, ascends to 40,000 phantom votes, or roughly one-third of DPS’ total.) But while DPS was presumably the biggest single vote-getter, together the three opposition coalitions it was facing still beat it by a wide margin. These opposition groups have signed a political pact with the intention of jointly forming Montenegro’s new government.

Even if they were to succeed, however, things at the top of the political pyramid would still remain the same. President Milo Djukanovic, who has been running Montenegro for the last thirty years, has another three years to go before his mandate expires. If the new government, as is likely, is formed by the opposition we will soon find out what the President thinks of the idea of cohabitation as the French would put it and had practiced successfully in the 1990s. Would temperamental Montenegrins manage to abide by the rules of such a delicate arrangement?

The choices facing President Djukanovic are stark. In order to evade legal problems related to broad accusations of criminal misconduct, he must hold on at all cost to the immunity afforded by the Presidential office. His options are neither many nor pleasant, given the palpable cooling in the stance of his Western sponsors toward his regime.

He could string out the appointment of the new government (constitutionally the process can take up to ninety days) or try to cobble together a majority coalition around his DPS by luring (in the Balkans there is little mystery about the means that would encompass, and personal charm is certainly not a part of it) a sufficient number of opposition deputies over to his camp. With thirty years of political experience, he surely has a dossier on every one of them and is well informed about their weaknesses.

The first option would depend heavily on Djukanovic’s betting on a Biden victory. Djukanovic has scored some good points with the Albanian factor in the Balkans by recognizing Kosovo and cooperating in other important ways. In fact, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, breaching diplomatic etiquette, made an impassioned appeal on Djukanovic’s behalf on the eve of the election. Biden is known to be sympathetic to the Albanian lobby, so support from him in the event he wins in November would not be an unreasonable expectation.

But while that is neither here nor there, the here and now does not look very cheerful. Signs that the West is getting tired and even annoyed with Djukanovic were accumulating as election day drew near and became particularly noticeable after the results were in. In a Statement issued two days after the votes were counted, EU honchos Josep Borrell and Olivér Várhelyi made it clear that Brussels would take a dim view of Djukanovic’s post-electoral shenanigans, though the warning was couched in refined diplomatic language. They referred to “a number of concerns in relation to undue advantage for the ruling party and the unbalanced media coverage” and urged “all political actors and relevant institutions … to engage in a transparent, decisive and inclusive dialogue on the implementation of these recommendations to address long-standing electoral shortcomings well ahead of the next elections”. Contrasted with effusive praise that until recently was showered on Djukanovic, these terse words are the functional equivalent of being politically thrown under the bus.

The other, more offensive strategy Djukanovic could employ is to play deaf to EU warnings and manufacture a parliamentary majority that would relatively smoothly prolong his rule. He could do it by…well, temporarily suspending the European values that he swears by and reverting to tried and tested Balkan methods of pressure creatively mixed with bribery. The alleged acquisition of enormous quantities of cash by illicit means is, after all, precisely one of the compelling reasons for holding on to the immunity of Presidential office, so the cash might as well be put to good use.

Djukanovic’s legacy is not pretty. Its leitmotif, simply put, is treachery, with larceny running not too far behind as the defining characteristic of his political career. His endless series of betrayals started with the opportunistic repudiation of his political mentor Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s. During the NATO aggression in 1999, he openly consorted with his country’s adversaries, whose bombs were destroying Montenegrin targets and killing Montenegrin civilians, as in the village of Murino. In 2006, he organized a fraudulent referendum which led to Montenegro’s separation from Serbia with himself as its undisputed ruler. When in 2010 the NATO occupied statelet of Kosovo declared its independence, he obligingly recognized it although a good part of it was Montenegrin territory until the beginning of World War I. But what did he care?

Having placed his fate entirely in the hands of new sponsors in Washington and Brussels, in lockstep with them he instituted a radically anti-Russian policy, even imposing “sanctions” on the Russian Federation, unconcerned about the overwhelmingly pro-Russian sentiment of the Montenegrin people. In 2015, by a vote in parliament under his party’s domination and without taking into account the opinion of the Montenegrin public, he dragged the country into the universally loathed NATO alliance.

The climax – and the beginning of his downfall – was the December 2019 law on religious communities that targeted the Serbian Orthodox Church. Unexpectedly, it touched a raw nerve. That is where the public, which had sullenly tolerated egregious misrule, finally drew the line. When parliament which he then still controlled passed the offensive religion law, peaceful rebellion could no longer be contained. Mass religious processions began being held in protest, demanding that the discriminatory law be repealed. With a new parliament to be seated soon, that very well may happen.

Fittingly, the great betrayer is now himself being betrayed by his foreign sponsors and there are signs that his domestic political machine is beginning to implode as well, as many of his lieutenants sense that the end is near. It is unlikely that many will regret Milo Djukanovic’s demise.

But it would be a mistake to see this as a belated outburst of Western-inspired triumphalism over the remnants of the vanquished Cold War enemy’s remnants. There was more irony than triumph here. And not because Djukanovic is still president, his mandate running until 2023, or because the opposition will likely have a razor-thin 41-40 majority, faced with the daunting task of disentangling the elaborate political-economic-media-criminal webs of a deep state built since 1989 (although many argue that its origins go back to the final communist liberation/takeover of Yugoslavia in 1945).

The irony, rather, lies in the fact that Djukanovic’s (un)reformed neo(liberal)-communists were a trusted Western partner and accomplice over most of that period. Djukanovic’s betrayal of the demonized Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, who had helped him ascend to power in the first place, followed by the subsequent betrayal of his main political partners, breakup of the joint state with Serbia in 2006 by way of a referendum of questionable validity and his sharp turn against Russia and towards NATO – these were all lauded in Western capitals, with hardly a peep about a “Berlin Wall” that needed taking down – until the desired tasks were accomplished, that is.

When Djukanovic and company staged a crudely organized, evidence-free “Russian-supported coup attempt” during the elections of October 2016, using the occasion to reduce turnout and proper election monitoring just enough to secure a (nevertheless narrow) victory and then, less than a year later, steered this coastal country of some 600,000 to the seemingly safe harbors of full NATO membership – they did not realize that the deafening applause they were hearing from the self-designated guardians of global democracy and all that is good, was in fact the far off sound of their swansong, and that it was time for a graceful exit. As it ultimately happens with all the West’s situational favorites, their expiration date was nearing.

For why would the West put up with living evidence of its double standards and selective attention to human rights and democracy longer than it had to, especially on hallowed European soil, where “democracy” is supposedly an indigenous plant? Djukanovic and pals had already become notorious for their Latin American-style rule, financed by proceeds of cigarette and drug smuggling, murky privatizations of state property and (deep) state-backed monopolies. Not to mention unsolved high-profile murders with a clearly political dimension, such as the May 27, 2004 assassination of the editor-in-chief of an opposition newspaper. In 2015, Djukanovic was even deemed worthy of a “criminal of the year” award.

But the warning shots, in the shape of increasingly unfavorable media coverage and negative “independent” reports on crime and corruption, went unheeded. Instead of gracefully withdrawing from the political stage to enjoy his millions, Djukanovic – the “eternal president” as Deutsche Welle dubbed him – reentered the arena and reclaimed the country’s highest office in 2018, which was his eighth term as either prime minister or president.

And Djukanovic’s party might very well have carried these last elections as well if not for the monumental mistake he made at the end last year, when, at his behest, the Montenegrin parliament passed the Law on the Freedom of Religion in the early hours of December 27, 2019. Despite its name, the law called for a de facto nationalization of properties of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) in Montenegro and for the Church to “register with the authorities” under an officially approved name, despite the fact that the SOC had just celebrated the 800^th anniversary of its autocephaly, along with its first diocese – the Zeta diocese – established in 1219 on the territory of today’s Montenegro, by Archbishop Sava, a prince of the Serbian Nemanjic dynasty. During the parliamentary voting, which took place in the dead of the night, the most vehement opposition MPs were arrested, despite their immunity.

Public resistance started the next day. Some of the police acted with brutality. A bishop was beaten severely enough to require hospitalization (another would be arrested a couple of months later, along with several priests). However, what first looked like just another mass political protest of the kind Djukanovic had previously successfully put down, quickly transformed into a spiritual tidal wave that washed over the country’s entire landscape – both physical and political.

It was estimated that anywhere between a quarter and a third of Montenegro’s population joined in what soon became daily processions. The scenes from the peaceful processions, in which priests and the faithful carried church banners, huge wooden crosses, icons, Serbian and traditional Montenegrin flags (whose colors are identical) while singing spiritual songs exploded over the region’s social media.

As was the case with most human activity, the processions were interrupted after three months in mid-March by the pandemic and the accompanying anti-mass gathering measures that the Montenegrin government was all too eager to enforce. But the damage had obviously been done. The spiritual uprising, with its rallying cry: “We won’t give up our shrines,” had broken the suffocating political atmosphere. The resistance of the Orthodox faithful also encouraged those of other faiths or even no faith at all to join in, and wound up serving as an organizing framework for all that were in any way opposed to Djukanovic and his 30-year rule, just in time for the August elections. The clear anti-regime opposition united in three blocs, preventing the dissipation of votes that had hampered previous campaigns, and secured the parliamentary majority.

Unlike previous times, Djukanovic could no longer count on overt pre- or post-election support from his Western allies. The incoming messages were neutral at best, and often unapproving. Even Freedom House was not amused, assessing that “corruption is a serious issue,” and that “investigative journalists and journalists critical of the government face pressure, as do many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).”

It may have been hard enough to support a figure like Djukanovic for so long, but now he had become undefendable. It wasn’t just the malevolent new law, but the fact that Djukanovic, himself an avowed, unbaptized secularist, was announcing the formation of a new, domestic “church.” This was not only a potential embarrassment for the post-religious Eurocrats in Brussels, but something that even the Ecumenical Patriarchate, fresh from its ill-conceived Ukrainian adventure, refused to support, standing firmly behind the Serbian Orthodox Church and its historical roots. Doubleplusungood.

Still, Djukanovic is not the type to go off into the night quietly. It’s expected that he’ll give his all to poach that all-important single MP from the opposition’s ranks as a last-ditch attempt to keep the reigns of power securely in his hands, and that his security services and underworld allies might engineer various, potentially destabilizing incidents. But there is a consensus that, this time, that simply won’t fly. The three opposition blocs have been so adamant in their opposition to the ruling party that any defection from the ranks would be clearly seen for what it is – a straight buy-off, after which all the grievances, emotions and resentments that had been pent up for decades, and which the Church-inspired uprising managed to discipline and channel in a positive, proactive direction, would finally explode out of control.

Unfortunately, if all else fails, après moi, le déluge does not seem like an option that Djukanovic and at least some of his domestic and foreign partners in crime would shy away from. So, the Montenegrin parliamentary elections may be over, but not the West’s traditional geopolitical game in the Balkans, according to which Montenegro is a key barrier to Serbia’s – and, by extension, its traditional ally and Orthodox Slavic cousin Russia’s – access to the warm Mediterranean and the (re)establishment of a sovereign bulwark against perpetual, Western-inspired “balkanization” that has made the area into a perpetual “tinderbox.” If that project, which includes not only the completion of NATO’s “unfinished business” in the region, but also the consolidation of an artificial Montenegrin, anti-Serbian identity – i.e., the Ukrainization of Montenegro – is seen to be endangered, then all bets are off and, in the eyes of certain Western swamp-dwellers, even damaged goods like Djukanovic might be preferable to any further inroads made in the region by dreaded Russia and the new(est) Western bogeyman, China.