Russian plan for Montenegro

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This article originally appeared at IN4S translated by Stevo Marjanović exclusively for SouthFront

Serious analysts are estimating that the Montenegro’s invitation for NATO membership will be postponed until the end of 2016. No one should be surprised by this, when we consider who is governing this country.

In early March, Francois Holland stated that France will not allow any further expansion of NATO. Since this announcement coincides with his meeting with Putin and chancellor Merkel in Minsk, it is possible that the informal part of Minsk agreements was stopping the NATO expansion.

Surprisingly, Montenegrin officials and most of the media hadn’t heard this message from France (the most important NATO member after US). Local NATO propagandists continued their campaign not listening to message coming from Champs-Élysées. So instead of spending millions of euros on the health and educational system, it was decided to spend money on impossible mission to fix the image of this military alliance, alliance that not only bombed these areas, but also contaminated them with the use of radioactive weapons.

This begs the question as to whether is the all present dogmatic NATO campaign product of political autism, or merely a farce, in which prime minister Djukanovic is trying to prove his loyalty to US and “ensure” American support? His next step was to openly blame Russia for organizing the protests. If his slanders had some hint of truth, I personally think that on October 24th his police would be paralyzed, just as Chechen terrorists were paralyzed 14 years ago in Moscow theater Dubrovka.

While I was in Moscow at the conference “Is NATO coming to Balkans – Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia?”, I noticed that Russian officials greeted the idea of our opposition to ensure military neutrality of Montenegro. It is realistic to expect that Russians will officially announce their offer to NATO during the next two weeks, to regulate the international position of Montenegro by the model of military neutrality of Austria.

The Austrian State Treaty was created exactly six decades ago, as a compromise between USSR, US, France and Great Britain. In addition to provisions which excluded the reunification with Germany and the restoration of Habsburg Monarchy, this document prohibited the accession of Austria to any military alliance and also prohibited the deployment foreign troops on Austria’s territory.

During the nineties, there were no foreign pressures to maintain Austria’s neutrality. When the former Soviet republics joined the NATO alliance, Austria decided to maintain their neutrality. Moreover, possible accession to NATO never became a relevant issue in this country.

Austrian Defense Minister Norbert Darabos said in an interview for Serbian Politika that “Austria enjoys its neutral status” and that the main advantages of the Austrian military neutrality are: “First of all, we have a flexible national position and we can, as such, participate in various organizations. The question is how much did those countries that joined NATO benefited from this? Because, you can cooperate with NATO without membership in the alliance, you have a number of examples of this.”
Minister Darabos also underlines that the concept of neutrality is 3 times cheaper than the eventual membership in NATO, “Now we spend on defense 0.7 percent of gross domestic product. If we join NATO, we would have to spend at least 2.2 per cent of gross national product.”
Austrian experience with neutrality would be enough to draw the relevant conclusions. Unfortunately, no one rational and prudent is managing Montenegrin state for a long time, as we can see when we look at the crazy NATO campaign. Foreign guarantee of survival of the regime in power today are the only strategy Montenegrin state policy is.

Montenegrin citizens are now facing a historical dilemma – will they choose military neutrality or will they allow this regime to forcefully push them into NATO.

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