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The last time Montenegro appeared in the US press
President Donald Trump was shoving its Prime Minister out of his way
during the Summit at which the former Yugoslav republic joined NATO
in 2017. Now Montenegro’s government, which came to power last
September, is shoving aside NATO in favor of improved relations with
Serbia and Russia.
Until last fall, Montenegro had been governed for
most of the last 30 years by Milo Djukanovic, either as President or
Prime Minister. Still in the presidency, he has been a determined
advocate of Montenegro’s independence, achieved in 2006, and its
affiliation with the US and Europe. Montenegro has become a
front-runner in the Western Balkan regatta for European Union
membership.
Djukanovic’s multiethnic political coalition lost
the parliamentary election last August by one seat to a coalition
whose core support comes from people who resisted Montenegrin
independence from Serbia and identify not as Montenegrin but as
Serb. This occurred after months of raucous street demonstrations
supported by the Serbian Orthodox Church, Serbia, and Russia, which
conducted an intense disinformation campaign on conventional and
social media.
The sponsors are getting their payback.
An effort to regularize the status of the Serbian
Orthodox Church and its property in Montenegro has been dropped.
Security officials have been replaced with people close to Russia.
The conviction of two politicians involved in the Russian-backed
plot to assassinate Djukanovic in 2016 has been overturned. Even the
rector of the main university has been purged in exchange for a
Russophile.
Belgrade and Moscow are gloating. Serbian
President Vucic hopes to re-attach Montenegro to Serbia as part of a
broader ambition to create what he calls a “SerbianWorld” that would
include parts of Kosovo and Bosnia. His Defense Minister, who denies
the genocide at Srebrenica, advocates a greater Serbian political
space, the cause for which the genocide was committed. The Russians
are using the friendlier officials in Montenegro’s defense
establishment to gain access to confidential NATO information.
Violence and vandalism are plaguing minority communities that have
long supported Djukanovic.
President Djukanovic himself is staying calm,
biding his time for a reversal of the electoral defeat. While his
coalition lost a municipal election in his hometown of Niksic on
March 14, his party did well and signaled that he is still a force
to be reckoned with. His opponents are pouring in money and
Russian-generated disinformation in their effort to weaken
Djukanovic further, in preparation for the next presidential
election in 2023.
The United States and the European Union have so
far refrained from expressing strong concern, despite the well-known
Serbian and Russian interference during the campaign. Election day
was reasonably free and fair and the subsequent transition was
constitutional and mostly peaceful. Djukanovic’s coalition had been
in power for a long time and had worn out its credibility with some
people in both Washington and Brussels by accruing repeated and
persistent corruption and organized crime allegations. It looked
initially like the kind of alternation in power that is normal and
desirable in a real democracy.
An election dominated by Serbian and Russian
disinformation does not, however, betoken democratic alternation.
Montenegro’s problem is that it never generated a pro-Western
opposition capable of alternating with Djukanovic’s coalition. The
current government has pledged not to reverse the Western thrust of
the country’s foreign policy, but in practice it is doing just that.
NATO has been concerned enough to send a security team to ensure
that classified information does not go astray. The deputy prime
minister has admitted to breaches of NATO classified information by
a newly appointed security official. The European Union has objected
to several legislative initiatives, including closing the special
prosecution office charged with investigating the 2016 assassination
plot.
Washington has been silent. It should not stay
that way. President Biden, decorated by the Montenegro in 2018,
knows the country well and supported its NATO aspirations when he
was Vice President. So too did prominent Republicans like Secretary
of State Pompeo and Senator Lindsay Graham. The U.S. Administration
and Congress should both ring a loud alarm warning that the current
Montenegrin government will not be allowed to undermine the Alliance
from inside.
Montenegro has been a notable, decades-long
success story. It stayed out of the Balkan wars of the 1990s,
liberated itself from Slobodan Milosevic’s autocracy, declared
independence peacefully, converted most of its economy to a market
system, opened negotiations on all the required “chapters” for
accession to the EU, and joined NATO, where it contributes in
particular to cybersecurity. That long record of success is now at
risk. If President Biden wants to encourage other countries to
travel this difficult path, Washington should lend a helping hand.
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