The Prospect of Western Europe Collapsing Like Eastern Europe

Soviet disintegration was perceived as unthinkable in 1985 and declared to have been inevitable in 1995. This leap from the ‘unthinkable’ to the ‘inevitable’ makes it a useful footnote to the current discussions on the future of Europe.

“In 1992, the world woke up without the Soviet Union on the map. One of the world’s two superpowers had collapsed without a war, invasion or any other catastrophic development. Although the Soviets had been in irreversible decline since the 1970s nothing had predetermined their collapse at the end of the 20th century.

“In 1985, 1986 and even in 1989 the disintegration of the Soviet Union was as unconceivable for the analysts of the day as the prospect of EU disintegration is for today’s experts. The Soviet empire was too big to fail, too stable to collapse, and had already survived too much turbulence.

“But what a difference a decade can make. What was perceived as unthinkable in 1985 was declared to have been inevitable in 1995. And it is exactly this twist of fate, this leap from the ‘unthinkable’ to the ‘inevitable’, that makes the experience of Soviet disintegration a useful footnote to the current discussions on the European crisis and the choices that European leaders face.
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“The latest Future of Europe survey, funded by the European Commission and published in April this year, demonstrates that while the majority of Europeans agree that the EU is a good place to live, their confidence in the economic performance of the Union and its capacity to play a major role in global politics has declined. More than six out of ten Europeans are convinced that the lives of those who are children today will be more difficult than the lives of people of their own generation.

“More troubling, almost 90 per cent of Europeans see a big gap between what the public wants and what their governments do. Only a third of Europeans feel that their vote counts in the EU and only 18 percent of Italians and 15 percent of Greeks feel that their vote counts even in their own countries.

“So, how unthinkable is disintegration? Is it not true that the survival of the EU will depend on the ability of leaders to manage the political, economic and psychological factors that were in play as the Soviet Union collapsed?
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“The EU is the most sophisticated political puzzle that history has known. Walter Bagehot observes that “the best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government.” So, the mass of mankind understands it. The EU, by contrast, is an unintelligible government that the mass of Europeans cannot understand.

Documents tarnish Montenegro's EU bid

An investigation by the BBC and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has uncovered documents which cast serious doubt on plans for the tiny Balkan nation of Montenegro to join the European Union.

Montenegro is an official candidate to join the EU and accession talks begin next month. This is despite concerns about allegations of political and financial corruption, which have led to the country being described as a "mafia state" - a claim which is forcibly rejected by the Montenegrin government.

The country has no currency of its own and has already unilaterally adopted the euro, despite concerns from Brussels. It is expected to be in the next batch of nations to join the EU after neighbouring Croatia becomes a member next year.

Montenegro's former Prime Minister, Milo Djukanovic, who is still president of the country's ruling party, was investigated by the Italian anti-mafia unit and faced charges over a billion-dollar cigarette smuggling operation based in Montenegro. Those charges were eventually dropped in 2009. As head of state, Mr Djukanovic had diplomatic immunity.

Now documents seen by the BBC raise further concerns about the man described as the "father of the Montenegrin nation".

An audit by accountants Price Waterhouse, carried out in 2010, raised questions about the running of the country's Prva Banka, or "First Bank", which is controlled by the Djukanovic family. The audit suggests that most of the money deposited at the bank came from public funds, while two thirds of the loans it made went to the Djukanovics and their close associates.
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Last week the European Commission gave the go-ahead for accession talks to proceed next month. But it warned: "Corruption is still an issue of serious concern."

It said it would continue to monitor the country's progress as it approached accession.

The accession of the Balkan countries remains a key priority for those in charge of European expansion, and Prime Minister Luksic is hoping the talks will allow him to show the country is changing for the better. But for the government's critics, there first needs to be accountability for the alleged crimes and misdemeanours of Mr Djukanovic's two decades in power.

Serb, Albanian Diaspora Get Varying Levels Of Support

May 27, 2012 By Lily Lynch and Linda Karadaku

"Along with broad cultural differences, Serb and Albanian members of the diaspora community find themselves in generally different predicaments if an emergency strikes hundreds or thousands of kilometers from home."

Read article.

Veterans Who Threw Away Medals At NATO Summit Mark Memorial Day

CHICAGO (CBS) – Veterans who returned their medals to NATO just over a week ago gathered at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at on the Chicago River on Monday, to talk about their feelings on Memorial Day.

They are men and women who have been to war, but are now waging their own fight against war.

Sabrina Waller, who served in the Kosovo conflict in 1999, threw her medals back last week – as anti-NATO demonstrators marched near McCormick Place during the NATO Summit.
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Waller was joined by other members of the group Iraq Veterans Against The War. They also stood with members the group Vietnam Veterans Against The War, who held up a banner reading “Honor The Warrior – Not The War.”

The two groups called for immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, rather than waiting until the end of 2014, as the Obama administration plans.

Push Comes to Shove, and Punch, in Ukraine Parliament

MOSCOW — What began as a legislative debate over Ukraine’s official language policy escalated into a fist-swinging, clothes-ripping brawl between screaming, sweaty lawmakers that reverberated around the Internet on Friday, embellishing the country’s standing in the pantheon of parliamentary punchfests that are captured on camera.

In what the BBC called the “Rumble in the Rada,” parliamentarians tumbled over their desks in the parliamentary chamber in Kiev, the capital, on Thursday night, trading blows, tearing shirts and choking one another as reporters and spectators in the balconies whistled and cheered. One deputy, thrown headfirst into a chair, turned and stumbled back into the melee. Another was flipped over a banister, feet flailing.

The 450-deputy Verkhovna Rada, as Parliament is called in Ukraine, was debating a measure that would elevate the status of Russian to a second language, equal to Ukrainian, in about half the regions of the country, including Kiev. The proposal’s passionate advocates and foes reflect the deep political divisions in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic where some regions harbor deep-seated resentment of Russians.

Serbian tells Putin he will not trade Kosovo for EU

(Reuters) - Serbia is on a "long and uncertain" road to joining the European Union but will not give up its claim to Kosovo for the sake of membership, President-elect Tomislav Nikolic told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday.
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"We see Serbia as our spiritual brothers," said Putin, who met Nikolic on the sidelines of a congress of the dominant United Russia party just outside the Kremlin.

Nikolic told Putin that "Serbia is a partner of Russia in the Balkans" and said he would protect the interests of Serbia and Russia. But Nikolic also offered further assurance that he wants Serbia to join the EU.

"Serbia is on the road to the EU. It is a long and uncertain road. We will order our country according to the rules that exist in the EU," Nikolic told Putin, according to Russian news agency Itar-Tass and Serbia's Tanjug.

He added that he has "not heard there exists the condition that Serbia should recognise Kosovo. We cannot do that, even if it meant breaking off negotiations at that very moment."
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Putin has sought to increase economic ties with Serbia. He told Nikolic that Russia was "ready" to provide an $800 million infrastructure improvement loan that has long been under negotiation, but did not say when it might be finalized.

Medvedev Warns of ‘Full-Blown Wars’

Military intervention in the sovereign affairs of other states may lead to outright war, including nuclear war, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.

“The introduction of all sorts of collective sanctions bypassing international institutions does not improve the situation in the world while reckless military operations in foreign states usually end up with radicals coming to power,” he told an international legal forum in St. Petersburg.

“At some point such actions, which undermine state sovereignty, may well end in a full-blown regional war and even - I’m not trying to spook anyone - the use of nuclear weapons,” he said.

US-Russia Relations in Holding Pattern, Analysts Say

Relations between the United States and Russia are in a holding pattern until after the U.S. presidential elections in November, according to experts on diplomacy between the two nations.

According to this analysis, once the new American president is chosen and Vladimir Putin settles in as the new Russian president, U.S./Russia relations should resume a level of cooperation established in recent years.
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During the Russian presidential campaign, Putin used a lot of anti-American rhetoric, a tactic that worked for him in the past.

But Legvold says such discourse has negative consequences because "it reinforces the impression that the Russians are anti-American, or that Putin is anti-American, or not ready to behave constructively. If it is primarily for electoral purposes, it's very short-sighted."

Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus at Princeton University and New York University, points to anti-Russian rhetoric in the American presidential campaign.

"When Romney says Russia is now America's 'number one geopolitical enemy' - which is so far from the empirical truth it's hard to even comment on it," says Cohen, "it's heard in Moscow.

"It's heard as a serious statement," Cohen adds. "It means only bad will come from the Americans; that they won't be partners; they won't honor their agreements; they won't make concessions."
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Analysts say one thing is for sure: the U.S.-Russia relationship has grown over the years to such an extent that they say a return to the tension-filled Cold War days is virtually impossible.

A lesson from Serbia

As the Balkan economies struggle, the temptation for nationalist solutions will grow. Europe must take note
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Serbia's urban middle class, disillusioned by the economic failure and by a series of major corruption scandals, stayed away from the polling booths. Most striking of all was Nikolic's victory over Tadic in Belgrade, the stronghold of liberal Serbs. Now politicians outside Serbia are quietly holding their breath. Will Nikolic allow his erstwhile prejudices to spill out and unsettle regional stability?

In the immediate future, this is unlikely. The west, the US, Britain and Germany in particular put considerable diplomatic effort into persuading Nikolic to break with Seselj in the first place, arguing that unless he embraced the European Union he would always remain a marginal figure. In his first comments to the press, Nikolic stated that Germany was "Serbia's most important political ally", a particular surprise given that Angela Merkel has warned Serbia very publicly that it must soften its position on Kosovo or never achieve its overriding political goal – EU membership.
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However, Nikolic's victory, combined with the disturbing rise of populism in Hungary, Serbia's neighbour to the north, should act as a wake-up call to the EU. The eurozone crisis has witnessed a rise in nationalist and even fascist parties on most parts of the continent. With some of the highest rates of unemployment and poverty, Balkan countries are susceptible to this creeping sickness. Indeed, one could argue that it is a credit to Balkan electorates that so far they have resisted the lure of nationalism.

But as their economies sag further (as they are predicted to do), the temptation for nationalist solutions will increase. Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia are all still grappling with profound issues of political identity and stability which could yet turn nasty. It's another very good reason for European leaders to confront the crisis and stimulate economic growth.

Serbia's newly elected president travels to Moscow

BELGRADE -- Tomislav Nikolić will on Friday travel to Moscow where he will on May 26 attend the congress of Russia's ruling party, United Russia.

The leader of the Serb Progressives (SNS) was on Sunday elected as Serbia's new president.

Nikolić was invited to the event before the elections - as the head of a party that has an agreement on cooperation with United Russia. 

He will address the congress, and possibly hold a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the SNS told Tanjug news agency. 


Russia Reports Successful Test of Missile

By ANDREW E. KRAMER

Published: May 23, 2012  NY Times

MOSCOW — Russia's military reported a successful test on Wednesday of a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile that generals said was designed to overpower the American missile defense system.

Russian generals told news agencies that the missile's technological development was a direct response to the American plans for a shield. The rocket, they said, uses a new type of fuel to shorten the time it needs to launch into space, increasing its ability to evade interceptors. One Russian news portal said the rocket was called the “Avant-garde.”

Whatever its military significance, the launch, as with other prominently announced tests, seemed intended as much to deliver a political message as demonstrate the rocket’s ability to streak across Russia and hit a target on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

read more...

UK steps closer to renewing nuclear firepower

(Reuters) - Britain moved a step closer to renewing its Trident nuclear weapons system on Tuesday, awarding 350 million pounds worth of contracts to design a new generation of submarines that critics say are the result of outdated, Cold War thinking.

The Successor class submarine would be used to replace the four Vanguard class vessels currently carrying Britain's Trident nuclear missiles, but a debate has raged about whether like-for-like renewal at an estimated cost of up to 20 billion pounds ($31.5 billion) is necessary.
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Reports have emerged that the Lib Dems want a more radical downgrading of Trident, in particular a departure from the so-called "Moscow doctrine" - the ability for Britain to act alone against Russia or another nation of similar power if need be.

"It is unthinkable today that Britain would contemplate the destruction of the heavily populated capital of Russia - or of any other city," wrote Lib Dem grandee and former party leader Menzies Campbell in the Financial Times newspaper last week.
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While some dismiss the Moscow doctrine as a Cold War throwback, others point to Britain's fraught ties with Russia in recent years, Moscow's increasingly tense relations with NATO and President Vladimir Putin's plans to beef up his military.

Russia Has No Business in NATO Missile Defense – Polish MP

Poland has warned Moscow against interfering in NATO’s plans concerning the deployment of a missile shield in Europe as Russia is not a member of the military alliance, a high-ranking Polish official said on Tuesday.

On Sunday, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced the “first step” in the European missile defense system.

“If this system belongs to NATO, then it cannot be that a state, which is not a NATO member, could influence NATO’s defense system and the development of this system,” said Bogdan Borusewicz, the chairman of the Polish parliament’s upper house.

Russia Criticizes Arrests of Protesters in U.S., Canada

Russia is seriously concerned over recent “aggressive” arrests of demonstrators in Chicago and Montreal and hopes that the U.S. and Canadian authorities will react to public rallies with restraint, the Russian Foreign Ministry's ombudsman for human rights, Konstantin Dolgov, said on Monday.

Mass arrests of supporters of the Occupy movement in Chicago and students protesting against the hike in university tuition fees in Montreal took place over the past few days.

“Despite the fact that citizens’ protests were peaceful in most of the cases, especially in the beginning, U.S. and Canadian police officers have used disproportionate force [against protesters],” Dolgov said.

Police arrest 45 as four cops hurt in Chicago anti-NATO protests

CHICAGO — Four police officers were injured and 45 demonstrators arrested after baton-wielding police clashed with anti-war protesters marching on the NATO summit in Chicago on Sunday, police said.

A lawyer’s group assisting protesters challenged police figures, saying at least 12 protesters were hurt, some with head wounds from police batons, and more than 60 people detained.

While the melee at the end of the rally received the most attention, the situation had calmed down by dark.

The size of the protests over the last week fell short of expectations. Police estimated about 3,000 people attended on Sunday, although many participants thought the crowd was larger. Organizers did not get the 10,000 people they had hoped for, or the 40,000 the anti-Wall Street Occupy movement boasted it would attract.
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Before the summit began, five men were arrested on terrorism-related or bomb-making charges. Three of those charged were plotting to attack Obama’s campaign headquarters, police stations and other targets, according to court documents. Defense lawyers said the three were entrapped by police informants.

Nationalist Wins Serbian Presidency, Clouding Ties to the West

PARIS — Tomislav Nikolic, a nationalist and former cemetery supervisor, was elected president of Serbiaon Sunday, in a surprise victory that cast doubt on whether the country would remain on its path toward the European Union or look increasingly eastward toward Russia.

With 40.67 percent of the vote counted, the official electoral commission said Mr. Nikolic, an outspoken admirer of Russia who was once a close ally of the former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, won 50.21 percent of the vote compared with 46.77 percent for Mr. Tadic of the Democratic Party. Mr. Tadic, a telegenic former psychology professor, ran on a campaign advocating for Serbia’s European Union membership.

Declaring victory, Mr. Nikolic, 60, said he remained committed to Serbia’s European Union aspirations. “Serbia will not walk away from its path to the E.U.,” he said, promising to restore Serbia’s economic fortunes while fighting corruption. “These elections were not about whether Serbia will go to E.U., they were about solving problems that the Democratic Party has created in Serbia,” he added.

Ratko Mladic is a substitute Hitler for today’s bored and mission-less Western hacks

By Brendan O'Neill Politics Last updated: May 17th, 2012

The cut-throat gesture made by Ratko Mladic on the opening day of his trial at The Hague sent a frisson of excitement through the press corps. Never mind that it’s now reported that the gesture could have been a demand for a toilet break rather than a threat to the Bosnian Muslims sitting in the gallery (ie. Mladic was saying, “Let’s cut for a minute, I need a leak”). The media still lapped it up, cock-a-hoop that their favourite evil man had done a really evil thing on the first day of his trial for being evil. They had the image they wanted, the image that would further boost the shtick they’ve been performing for 20 years now: the one in which the Serbs play the role of modern-day Nazis who love killing and raping people, and the moral crusaders of the Western media play the role of unimaginably brave witnesses to this Nazi-style nastiness.

The trial of Mladic has nothing to do with “justice for Bosnia”. It is better understood as a cut-price Nuremberg for modern moral crusaders who, lacking a Hess or a Goering, will make do with a Mladic instead. Mladic is a substitute Nazi for self-styled reincarnations of Churchill, those middle-aged bores of the liberal international media who fancy that their brave reporting from Bosnia in the mid-1990s helped to expose that Nazism was alive and well and living in the DNA of every Serb man. No mention of Mladic is complete without the deployment of Holocaust-echoing terminology, whether we’re being reminded that he is responsible for “the worst crimes in Europe since the Nazi Holocaust”, or that he is the “architect of genocide”, or that he was hellbent on cleansing, exterminating, wiping out, and so on.

NATO As Nero: Alliance Postures While Europe Burns

NATO leaders are meeting in Chicago with a full agenda. It’s the biggest NATO meeting ever, with some 60 governments in attendance. But no one is asking the most important question: why is America still defending Europe?

The North Atlantic Treaty Alliance once had an obvious purpose: to defend North Atlantic countries. More precisely, the U.S. was to protect everyone else. The war-ravaged western European states feared pressure, if not conquest, by the Soviet Union. NATO also helped tie a rearmed Germany to its neighbors.

The alliance finished its work on November 9, 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. Soon the Warsaw Pact dissolved and the Soviet Union disappeared.

There then ensued a desperate attempt to find a new role for the alliance. Some officials suggested that NATO could fight the illicit drug trade, promote the environment, or even aid student exchanges. Alliance advocates settled on engaging in “out-of-area” activities. That is, NATO abandoned its traditional role of defending its members and switched to pursuing social engineering around the globe, as well as acting as a tool to socialize former communist states.

One thing did not change. The U.S. continued to subsidize the defense of everyone else. NATO essentially stood for North America and The Others. If anything was going to happen, it would have to be organized and paid for by Washington.
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The problem was evident in 1999 when the allies bombed essentially defenseless Yugoslavia. America did most of the work since Europe was estimated to have barely 10 to 15 percent of U.S. combat capabilities.

Last year’s intervention in the Libyan civil war was no better. It was supposed to be a European-led operation, but the Europeans took months to push the opposition to victory over the ragtag forces of Moammar Qaddafi.
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Yet NATO expansion is in the air. In March Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), just defeated for reelection in his party’s primary, and Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) introduced the “NATO Enhancement Act” to extend the alliance. Unfortunately, NATO expansion adds security liabilities rather than military abilities.

Originally the alliance was created to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union. Today no country is in a position to dominate Eurasia. The idea of an attack on western—or central—Europe is but a paranoid fantasy. Russia may be an unpleasant neighbor, but it has reverted to pre-1914 great power mode. Moscow wants secure borders and international respect. Florid threats to preempt a missile defense system to the contrary, even Vladimir Putin at his most aggressive isn’t likely dreaming of a revived Red Army marching down the Unter den Linden in Berlin or Champs-Elysees in Paris.
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NATO played an important role during the Cold War. The collapse of communism and the Soviet Union have eliminated its raison d’être. Even NATO admits that the alliance’s “value is less obvious to many than in the past.”

Instead of desperately concocting new missions for an old alliance, the U.S. should applaud NATO’s success and turn the organization over to the Europeans. America no longer need protect a continent that is both richer and more populous than our own nation.

NATO 'terror plotters' arrested

THREE NATO summit protesters have been charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism in Chicago.

The plotters considered hitting US President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters and other targets with "incendiary devices," the Chicago Tribune reported yesterday.

The three men were ordered held on $1.5 million bail each yesterday after they were charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism and possession of an explosive or incendiary device, the Tribune said.
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The arrests came amid a series of Chicago police raids on protesters planning demonstrations of the NATO summit this weekend. The Tribune said the charges were the result of a month-long investigation into a group believed to be responsible for making Molotov cocktails.

The men were charged late on Friday, as police released another six protesters who were arrested in a Wednesday raid on an apartment building in the Bridgeport neighborhood.
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The National Lawyers Guild added that the men were merely protesters who were in possession of beer-making equipment that was found in the apartment they were staying in during the police raid Wednesday.

"Charging these people who are here to peacefully protest against NATO for terrorism, when in reality the police have been terrorising activists in Chicago, is absolutely outrageous," Mr Gelsomino told the Tribune.

Turkey's long wait to join EU club

Nothing in Stefan Fuele's in-tray is more daunting than Turkey.

The European Union enlargement commissioner's job is to manage the accession of new member states, and Turkey's candidacy dwarfs that of any other country, in both its scale and complexity.
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EU officials point out that the trading relationship with Turkey is still very strong, underpinned by a partial free trade agreement - called a customs union - since 1995, which is widely credited for much of Turkey's recent economic progress.

More than 40% of Turkish exports go to the EU.

They also work closely together on foreign policy - especially the crisis in Syria - energy and terrorism.

What they cannot do at the moment is restart the formal accession negotiations - the 35 chapters of EU law, known as the "acquis" - that Turkey must comply with before it is eligible to become a full member.

Each candidate has to open the chapters, relating to everything from the environment to human rights, change laws and government practice to match EU standards, and then agree with Brussels to close them.

Turkey must comply with all 35 areas of EU law in order to join the club In the seven years since negotiations began, Turkey has opened only 13 chapters, and closed only one, on science and research. No chapters have been opened for two years.

Eighteen chapters have been frozen - eight by the EU, because of Turkey's refusal to allow Cypriot ships to use Turkish ports, and the remaining 10 by the governments of Cyprus and France.
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The writer and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk said recently that the hearts of Turkish Europhiles had been broken by the reluctance to welcome Turkey into the EU club.