Yugoslavia then and now

Zivadin Jovanovic* March 25, 2020 The time of adjustment The world is undergoing a period of great development, great change, and adjustment. The international order is changing with the acceleration. The fall of the Berlin Wall thirty years ago (1989) has marked the end of the bipolar World Order. The “winners” of the Cold War adopted a policy of expansion, interventionism and domination. NATO illegal aggression on Yugoslavia 1999 represented the peak of uni-polar world order but, also, the beginning of its downfall. Today, the process of multi-polarization of global relations has already gone far beyond the point of no return. It is impossible any longer that any single power imposes own will or own interests above the will and interests of the others. The driving forces of this historic transformation towards the world of equals, shared responsibilities and community of shared future are China, Russia and other countries of...

This is how Dr. Vankovska, TFF Associate for over 20 years, succinctly has responded to an inquiry by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.  And on this very day, Macedonia signed its accession protocol to NATO. Let’s make clear a few things: first, the so-called Prespa process, in which the Republic of Macedonia had to change its name and the constitution, had primarily been inspired by wider geopolitical reasons and run by Western power centers. In my view, the collateral damage of this – alleged Nobel Peace Prize worthy – success is the internal political situation and stability. Second, if the NATO enlargement process teaches us anything it is that the political will of the member-states has dominance over the declared criteria for admission to the Alliance. It seems that everything is set now (unlike 2008) so there is no doubt that Macedonia’s accession to NATO is certain. Objectively speaking, the country finds...

U.S Vice President Mike Pence, left, joined by Montenegro’s Prime Minister Dusko Markovic during a joint press conference in Villa Gorica in Podgorica, Montenegro on August 2, 2017. (AP Photo / Risto Bozovic)   Did Montenegro’s NATO accession increase the collective defense of the West or merely protect a corrupt regime? When Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently asked President Donald Trump why the United States should defend Montenegro, Trump responded by saying that if Montenegrins decided to “get aggressive.… Congratulations, you’re in World War III.” The subsequent outcry was predictable; a New York Times editorial quickly attacked Trump’s comments as revealing “another facet of his ignorance of and disdain for America’s historic place in the world and its alliances.” Yet Trump’s comments—inarticulately expressed as they were—were in fact in line with the thinking of past American presidents leery of getting the country involved in foreign problems with no bearing...

The ethnic map few understood. Should make it clear that cutting up Yugoslavia in independent republics could not be done without bloodshed. (1) Yellow = Serbs, Dark Green = Muslims, Light Blue = Croats,  Light Green = Slovenes, Orange = Montenegrins, Pink = Albanians, Darker Blue = Macedonians   , marks the 19th anniversary of NATO illegal and illegitimate bombing of Yugoslavia, Serbia and its Kosovo, province during 78 days. It has – one is tempted to say: of course – been conveniently forgotten by the West itself. It was masterminded by the United States under Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright after the so-called negotiations between Serbs and Albanians in Rambouillet outside Paris (the parties never met face-to-face) While Clinton may be best remembered for his relations with Monica Lewinsky and his wife, Hillary Clinton, some of us also remember him (and Albright) for bombing Afghanistan, Sudan,...

  • We are soon going to have a clash between President Donald Trump and international law. This is predicable when one examines the presidential discourse over what to do about North Korea and its possession of nuclear-tipped rockets. He has threatened “fire and fury” which doesn’t sound like the opening words of the UN’s Charter: “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…..and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained……and for these ends to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours.” There should be no question that if the Charter is followed that Trump cannot legally make a pre-emptive strike, either one nuclear or conventional, unless war is imminent because of threatening moves by the antagonist. He could...

  By Biljana Vankovska Interview with Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo   • Do you support the idea of having the accord with Greece over the disputes on the country’s name? If yes/no, please tell us the reason. It is hard to support an irrational dispute, only because one has a nationalistic idea that the name Macedonia implies irredentism. Apart from that, it is highly asymmetric dispute because Greece has nothing to gain or lose in substantial terms, while the Republic of Macedonia may lose not only its right on self-identification, identity but also to open a Pandora’s box of internal political and ethnic strife. The dispute has never been only over the name of the state (although a state’s name is a part of its international legal identity). All proposals of Matthew Nimetz has been so-called “ a set of ideas”, containing a range of aspects that directly affect the name...

By Andrew Rettman euobserver 9th Jan 2018 • Leading EU countries and the US have warned Kosovo of “severe consequences” if it walked away from a war crimes tribunal. Via euobserver.com “We urge all Kosovo’s leaders … [to] honestly inform Kosovo’s citizens of the severe negative consequences, including for Kosovo’s international and Euro-Atlantic integration, if Kosovo continues on this path,” France, Germany, Italy, the UK, and the US said on Thursday (4 January). The EU set up the Kosovo Relocated Specialist Judicial Institution (KRSJI) in The Hague to treat allegations that senior members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were involved in harvesting and selling the organs of Serb prisoners during Serbia’s war with Kosovo in 1998 and 1999. It started work in early 2017 and is to shortly issue its first indictments. It did not get enough votes, even though two other parties, the PDK and Nisma, were on...

  s. That motivated Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to make a statement to the effect that “Mladic is the epitome of evil, and the prosecution of Mladic is the epitome of what international justice is all about.” But that statement is, if anything, the epitome of exemplary nonsense, pro-Muslim bias and something the UN S-G ought to distance himself from since it is a purely political statement. The media – in the West in particular – have of course lapped it up. Most media people today are too young to have any personal experience of the events some 25 years ago and would have to read thick books to understand some of it. The verdict’s political effect – whether intended or not – is to justify the horrible way the so-called “international community” intervened in the Yugoslav complex of intertwined conflicts with...