Montenegrin Mirror Polity in Turmoil (1991-2001)

Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror Polity in Turmoil (1991-2001)

Nansen Dialogue Center Podgorica 2002

Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror

Publisher Nansen Dialogue Center Podgorica

Editor Daliborka Uljarević

Reviewers Nebojša Vučinić Srđan Darmanović

Language Editor Piter Barsoum

Translation of review Ivana Gajović Vesna Bulatović

Layout Đuro Stojanović Blažo Crvenica Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror Polity in Turmoil (1991-2001)

Nansen Dialogue Center Podgorica 2002

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović

Table of Contents Montenegrin Mirror Polity in Turmoil (1991-2001)

Part One Essays Montenegrin Alternative: Transition, Identity, State 11 Understanding Neopatriarchy 21 Before The Storm 25 After The Storm 29 Democratic FRY: Mission Improbable 33 The Last Balkan Triangle 37 Between East And West: Two Ideas Of a Nation-State 41 Europe versus Europe 47 New Miscalculations 53 Dances With Wolves 57 Shocking Connection 61 The Curse Of Involvement 65 Imagining Alternatives 69

Part Two Articles Yugoslav Disintegration In A World-System Perspective 75 After The Collapse 121 NATO Expansion And Balkan Testing Ground 143 Unholy Alliance 159 A Tadpole Transition and Its Alternative 165 The Post-Cold War Balkan Chaos And New Ideological Order 177

Appendices Review 197 Acknowledgements 201 Author 205

Part One Essays

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Montenegrin Alternative Transition, Identity, State June 1999

The rule of law has never really been a really working and stable principle in the shaky Balkan states. What happened in the second quarter of 1999, during the devastating NATO bombardment, in Montenegro, however, has been unprecedented even for these unstable lands. Two phenomena or sides of this unique process have been the most striking of all. The first one has been the worsening of the crisis and the almost total collapse of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, common state of Serbia and Montenegro. As a matter of fact, there are two remaining and functioning quasi- federal institutions on the territory of Montenegro today: the Army of Yugoslavia and the Dinar, the national monetary unit. In other respects, Serbia and Montenegro have been functioning as two de facto separate and independent states. The second phenomenon or side of this very special process has been a bitter internal Montenegrin power struggle between the two extremely opposed political camps, the two pro- and anti-Milošević forces. The struggle has already escalated into a kind of extremely unstable duality of power wavering at the very edge of internal fratricidal turmoil. That two differently dressed armed forces, the Army of Yugoslavia and the Police of Montenegro, patrol Montenegrin cities and villages every day in a mutually suspicious, tense and semi-hostile mood, is only the most evident indicator and expression of this duality.

To understand fully these and other current Montenegrin political, legal, and constitutional peculiarities, one should put them into a wider time framework. First of all, one should put or back them into the framework of heavy post-communist transition. Globally, as well as in Montenegro this transition began in 1989, but in

11 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror

Montenegro it has consisted of two essentially different and distinctive phases. In the first phase, during the period 1989-1997, Montenegro passed through a sort of negative transition, substitut- ing one (nationalistic i.e. Greater Serbian) for the other (communist) type of closed society. It goes without saying that the Balkan wars have been the main fuel and force of this negative and devastating process. Through out this period, Montenegrin ruling Democratic Party of Socialists was in coalition with Slobodan Milošević’s Socialist Party of Serbia. Together these two extremely authoritarian and hawkish nationalistic parties founded the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992. Given its undemocratic origin and nature, however, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia could never become anything more than a facade federation, to use Karl Friedrich’s famous phrase. Needless to say, Greater Serbia has been under this facade.

The great, three months of, anti-Milošević protests in Belgrade and other parts of Serbia during fall and winter of 1996-1997 were a prelude to the second phase of the Montenegrin post-communist transition. In Serbia these protests vanished with almost no political result. In Montenegro, however, they provoked and, in the course of the spring and summer of 1997, led to an open political struggle and a split within the ruling Democratic Party of Socialists. Slobodan Milošević’s supporters led by Momir Bulatović eventually lost the struggle, left the Democratic Party of Socialists, and founded the new and explicitly pro-Milošević Socialist People Party.

The disintegration of the old monopolistic Democratic Party of Socialists was a necessary pre-condition for the beginning of the positive transition of the second phase. To fight and resist Slobodan Milošević’s regime, Milo Đukanović’s new Democratic Party of Socialists has been forced to form a coalition with anti- Milošević opposition parties. The Great Montenegrin anti- Milošević coalition was formed and declared on September 1, 1997. As result, Montenegrin pro-Milošević forces suffered two

12 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović heavy political defeats in the next several months. On October 19, 1997, a pro-Milošević candidate and puppet, Momir Bulatović, lost the presidential election, and his opponent and anti-Milošević contender, Milo Đukanović, became the new President of Montenegro. More importantly, on May 31, 1998, pro-Milošević Socialist People Party was defeated by the Montenegrin anti- Milošević coalition at the early parliamentary election.

Political confrontation between the two main political blocks, pro- Milošević and anti-Milošević forces in Montenegro, has been characterized by standard transitional problems, topics and disputes. So, pro-Milošević i.e. anti-modernization forces have been advocating and fighting for Greater Serbian aggressive nationalism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, a closed society, and economic and political conservatism. On the other hand, the anti-Milošević (i.e. pro-modernization forces), quite conversely, have been advocating and achieving some nascent but important results in developing multi-ethnic tolerance, an open society, civic culture, reintegration into the international community, and economic and political reforms. Given the situation of prolonged and exhausting Post- Cold War Balkan chaos, uncertainty, fear and war, however, all these and similar problems, topics and disputes have been somewhat over shadowed and complicated by one single but most complex and difficult question. That question is, the question of State.

The question of State marked the very beginning of the second phase of the Montenegrin transition in 1997. Slobodan Milošević’s authoritarian rule affected both human (civil) and Montenegrin (state) constitutional rights. His rule finally provoked not only opposition protests in Serbia but also deep dissatisfaction and division in Montenegro. The line of division was clear. “Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without alternative”. This was the main political idea and slogan used by Momir Bulatović, leader of Slobodan Milošević’s loyalists in Montenegro, in March of 1997. Bearing in mind the real substance of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, however, the slogan should be appropriately translated

13 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror and understood as the “Greater Serbia and Slobodan Milošević without alternative”. The Political reaction of the pro-Montenegrin and pro-democratic forces was prompt. Montenegro may only live in a democratic Yugoslavia in which Montenegrin constitutional rights are fully guaranteed and respected from both federal and Serbian authorities. Consequently, if Greater Serbian political repression and violation of Montenegrin constitutional rights continue, Montenegro may leave the federation. This was the main political idea of the reaction. The Montenegrin alternative was born.

Being unable to control Montenegro, Slobodan Milošević and his loyalists changed political tactics in the following two years. They did their best to expel Montenegro from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. One after the other, almost all federal constitutional norms and institutions, Administration, Parliament, Constitutional Court and others, were gradually but totally destroyed and emptied out of any credible constitutional substance. Politically, this was executed through a machiavellian, pro-Milošević, but at the same time anti-federal and anti-Montenegrin coalition, which has been concluded between the Serbian political majority (the Socialist Party of Serbia plus Serbian Radical Party) and Montenegrin political minority (Socialist People Party). Legally, it has been misinterpreted as a would-be defense of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia through countless and sometimes really incredible decisions of Federal Constitutional Court. In reality, this constitution and federal facade as a whole have been definitely turned into ashes by these very forces and decisions. Not the secession of Montenegro, as a would-be Yugoslav (Greater Serbian) propaganda ceaselessly accuses, but the secession of Slobodan Milošević’s Serbia from Yugoslavia, that has been the real nature of this creeping process. As a result, what can be seen today in Montenegro is a balance of fear and duality and a confusion of power from the beginning of this period.

After a decade of cascading and cataclysmic disintegration of communist Yugoslavia, from Slovenia and Croatia to Bosnia,

14 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović

Herzegovina and Kosovo, one should not wonder at all about the ongoing process in Montenegro. However, one must really wonder why and how it has happened that a relatively large percentage of the Montenegrin population has persistently (twice) supported “The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia i.e. Greater Serbia without alternative”. Momir Bulatović, author of this political formula, lost the presidential election on October 19, 1997, but with an extremely small, almost negligible political margin (the result was very close to 50:50). His Socialist People Party lost the premature parliamentary election on May 31, 1998, with much greater difference (36:50), but still the 36% was a pretty high percentage.

No doubt, the long lasting political propaganda and repression of Slobodan Milošević’s regime may explain at least a part of this percentage. Nevertheless, a much greater part of the percentage deserves some deeper and more complex explanation. Such a deep and complex explanation of this phenomenon may be found in the hidden sphere of identity. To be enlightened on the peculiar behavior of the Montenegrin constituency more comprehensively, one should correlate the numerous and complex problems of transition and state controversy with the even more numerous and complex contents of the unique Montenegrin identity.

Montenegro is one of the smallest European and Balkan entities. According to the last census from 1991, Montenegro has only 616 552 citizens. Their ethnic composition is as follows: Montenegrins 61.9%, Muslims 14.6%, Serbs 9.3%, and ethnic Albanians 6.6%. Even if we reasonably suppose that most if not all Muslims and ethnic Albanians voted against and most if not all Serbs for the “Federal Republic (Greater Serbia) without alternative”, it is quite obvious that these groups could not decide the elections held in 1997 and 1998. Obviously, the ethnic majority group of Montenegrins decided the elections. Correlating these figures with the results of some previous elections, it is possible to conclude that this very group has been sharply divided around the state controversy in almost the same 50-50 proportion as the overall popu-

15 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror lation and constituency of Montenegro. From some other sources, it is known that some ethnic Montenegrins consider themselves to be only Montenegrins, but some of them consider themselves to be simultaneously Montenegrins and Serbs. It is quite reasonable to suppose that the latter voted for “the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Greater Serbia) without alternative”.

However bizarre, the above-described phenomenon of double identity is not absolutely unknown. Quite the contrary, Samuel Huntington’s concepts of “torn country” and “cultural schizophre- nia” perfectly describe the phenomenon. But only describe. Samuel Huntington’s “civilization”, “religion”, “culture” are not the most important factors of explanation. Double identity still waits for some deeper and more complex elucidation. In the Montenegrin case, the elucidation comes from at least two centuries of long lasting and extremely contradictory state-building processes. Independent Montenegro or Montenegro as a part of some greater state (Greater Serbia, Yugoslavia), these two-three state-ideas have been the two-three principal and sometimes warring alternatives of modern Montenegrin history. Double identity imprinted on the mass consciousness of most Montenegrins has been a contradictory but logical result of these two competing and confronting state ideas.

Montenegro is not only one of the smallest, but also one of the oldest European and Balkan entities as well. Centuries before Montenegro was formally recognized as an independent state by the great powers at the Berlin Congress in 1878, this entity enjoyed the privileges of an independent territory, jealously and permanently fighting for freedom against surrounding Ottomans. Being constantly threatened by numerous and mighty enemies, Montenegro and Montenegrins have been historically determined to accept some greater, pan-Slavic or pan-Serbian state idea. On the other hand, a great pride in unique and long lasting independence, as well as a disappointing experience of more recent discon- tentment and frustration within a new greater state, has made more

16 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović and more Montenegrins accept and fight for the revival of an independent Montenegrin state. There is no mystery at all. Montenegrin’s double identity comes not from some abstract “civilization”, “religion”, or “culture”, but from real and contradictory historical process.

This process and its double identity pulsated dramatically through the whole turbulent and violent XX century. In 1918, Montenegro lost her independence for the sake of Greater Serbian Yugoslavia. The reaction in Montenegro was a kind of low-intensity but protracted civil war between the so-called “Whites” (supporters of Greater Serbian “unconditional unification”) and so-called “Greens” (supporters of independent Montenegro and con-federate Yugoslavia) in the period of 1918-1929. Little wonder, then, that the Montenegrin so-called “Whites” were directly and indirectly supported by Greater Serbian forces from the bordering and semi- hostile Serbia. The link between Greater Serbia’s followers from Serbia and Montenegro was established very early and it has been constantly operating until today. In 1945, the communists reesta- blished a surrogate Montenegrin State within a facade and highly centralized federation. In fact, the communist federation was a kind of tacit (and intelligent?) compromise between the two contradictory forces. The process came full circle in the 1990-s. The drama of Montenegrin double identity has been reopened and replayed in the midst of the heavy post-communist transition and deformed modernization.

In the course of the 1990-s, this drama reached its climax. On the one hand, there was a clear increase of pro-Montenegrin voices, namely of those Montenegrins supporting independent Montenegro or Montenegro within a confederate Yugoslavia. In the period 1991-1997, the number of Montenegrins taking such a political stance was not greater than one fifth of the Montenegrin constituency. In 1997 and 1998, the number reached half of that constituency. Finally, the hammer of NATO bombardment from abroad and the anvil of Greater Serbian pressure from within has

17 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror made that number reach almost two thirds of the constituency today. On the other hand, however, this evident increase has been followed and countered with the equally evident increase of political polarization and the risk of internal conflict between the two main political forces in Montenegro.

Being aware of this risk, the main Montenegrin political forces have agreed to “freeze” their dispute about the traumatic state question and leave it for constitutional resolution after the ending of the NATO bombardment. According to the constitution, Montenegro may leave the federation if Montenegrin citizens decide so in a referendum. Given the prevailing internal and international realpolitik, however, there are no necessary guarantees that this rational consensus and constitutional road will be respected at all. Quite the contrary, the danger of a violent explosion of the internal Montenegrin dispute is still relatively high.

First of all, Slobodan Milošević’s aggressive nationalistic regime, the main source of chaos and war in the Post-Cold War Balkan turmoil, is still in power. It is true that this regime has been threatened with the ongoing NATO action and recent Hague indictment. It is also true that in the long run this threat will probably weaken and finally crush the regime. But before this final collapse comes, this regime will probably become even more aggressive and dangerous for its neighbors. This is especially true if the neighbor is the only remaining territory for such kind of exercises, as Montenegro is. Endangered dictatorship is the most dangerous dictatorship. In addition, Montenegro alone has been “torn country”. Slobodan Milošević’s regime and Greater Serbian alternative has a decreasing but still significant support in Montenegro. Therefore, the Greater Serbian threat to Montenegro has been a very complex mixture of internal and external forces, not a simple external threat. This makes Montenegro extremely vulnerable to any Greater Serbian aggressive move. Last but not least, the Post-Cold War Balkan scene is far from normalization. It goes without saying how much this scene favors and breeds violent forces and alternatives.

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Montenegro is still on the tightrope between war and peace. Montenegro’s constitutional and overall future is still extremely uncertain and blurred. No wonder that one of the names that is most frequently on the lips of the common people in Montenegro today is the name of St. Peter of Cetinje, Montenegro’s founding father, religious leader and statesman who lived two centuries ago. Could it be a sign of a Higher Care and Hope?

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Understanding Neopatriarchy August 2000

More than in any other modern social science, Montenegro has achieved its privileged place in modern European ethnology. Together with Sicily and Scotland, Montenegro has been tradition- ally studied in this science as one of the last patriarchal oasis in Europe. In spite of that, even the Montenegrin (not to speak about Western) public has been sincerely and rightfully astonished by the abrupt and vehement resurrection of its “tribes” in the last two years. This exotic resurrection has happened and inserted itself in the very midst of heavy political confrontation between Milo Đukanović’s Montenegro and Slobodan Milošević’s Serbia. It has really been an extremely bizarre and challenging phenomenon: almost forgotten Montenegrin clans and their self-proclaimed leaders reviving and taking side with Slobodan Milošević and his Montenegrin supporters in their bitter fight for the so called “Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without alternative”.

Little wonder this phenomenon has already provoked serious mis- interpretations and misunderstandings. The most important and most frequent among them is one that one-dimensionally and wrongly explains this phenomenon as a mere pre-modern relic. In fact, this way of interpreting and understanding old Montenegrin tribes is just one recent version of what Karl Popper used to criti- cize as historicistic fallacy of social sciences. What we are witnessing in Montenegro and in similar places on the globe today, however, is not a simple, one-dimensional, and uni-linear revival of the past, pre-modern times, but a very complex and complicated interplay of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern structures and elements. More concretely, the ongoing resurrection of tribes from XVIII and XIX century in Montenegro today, at the very end of XX century, may be adequately interpreted and understood only

21 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror if we put it into the context of the current Montenegrin and Balkan postcommunist crisis. The secret is that this crisis is a component and consequence of attempted but failed modernization, not of any pre-modern eternity. To try to interpret and understand this resurrection in the framework and terms of a would-be pure pre-modernity means nothing less than to miss the main point of the phenomenon.

Historicistic perspective totally distorts and obscures the real and essential relationships between history (historical tradition, including ethnic identity) and politics (political action, including the state building process). Within this perspective, history is first and active, politics second and passive, identity given and unchange- able, state dependant and consequential. In reality, however, the relationships between the two are much more complex, two-sided, and inter-active, than they are pictured in a historicistic perspective. Politics, political action, and state building process are at least as much active and productive as history, historical tradition, and ethnic identity are. In fact, in a very complex multitude of various relevant factors, the political factor is certainly the one that is the most active and productive of all. Late Montenegrin tribes from the end of XX century definitely confirm this fundamental fact. Far from coming into existence and acting spontaneously, as their leaders prefer to present, they have been largely fabricated and maintained by Slobodan Milošević’s political regime. One of the most telling characteristics of their second arrival in Montenegro is their one-party membership. Namely, they are almost exclusively consisting of the members of the SNP, which is the main pro-Milošević’s party in Montenegro. The author of this article, for example, is a member of the Kuči tribe, but he has never been invited and allowed to participate into the gatherings of this newly established SNP-Kuči community. This grotesque mixture of pre-modern historical forms (tribal gatherings) and quite modern political contents (party political life) most clearly reveals the very substance and essence of modern Montenegrin exoticism. The real political function of the mixture, deeply shad-

22 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović owed and obscured by the mainstream historicist presentation, makes this substance and essence become even more visible and clear. To understand fully this important function, one should recall when and why Montenegrin tribes reemerged in recent times. It was exactly in 1999. After the two consecutive political defeats, on the presidential elections of 1997 and parliamentary elections of 1998, Slobodan Milošević and his followers in Montenegro were facing a progressive and dangerous lack of political legitimacy. They were simply forced to build some new, alternative, however false, source of legitimacy. The tribes were born.

Unlike any mainstream historicist perspective, which is mostly inappropriate and misleading, there are, fortunately, a number of alternative analytical perspectives, which are much more adequate in their attempt to explain late Montenegrin tribes and similar phenomena elsewhere today. Suffice only to mention three of them: world-system analysis (Immanuel Wallerstein), history of long duration (Fernand Braudel), and the theory of neo-patriarchal society (Traian Stoianovich). Some elements from these three perspectives have been loosely applied in this short essay. With no ambition to make any kind of conclusion, a concise and tentative comment of the third of them could be the most adequate summary of the whole exercise. Really, the very concept of “neo-patriarchy” can be intellectually satisfactory and productive only if it manages to achieve and preserve a necessary balance between the “neo” and the “patriarchy” in the analysis. Montenegrin 1999-2000 unique “tribal” experience has thoroughly explained this crying need.

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Before the Storm September 2000

“Catastrophic short-termism” (John Roper) has probably been the most comprehensive and adequate description of the international community’s political behavior in the post-Cold War Balkan crisis in general as well as in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-95 and in Kosovo in 1999 in particular. Has the international community learned something from its own mistakes? Has it improved its pattern of behavior? Has it changed this pattern from being, permanently late, mostly counter-productive, and frequently repressive into a more preventive, productive, and peaceful?

Having in mind the current Montenegrin crisis, which is one of the hottest spot in the region today, it could be convincingly argued that the answers to these and similar questions are still more or less uncertain and open. The international community’s Montenegrin dossier 1997-2000 has been extremely mixed and ambiguous. Some new preventive elements have been intertwined here with some elements that are unfortunately very well known from the old, late, and repressive pattern. Extremely inadequate and unprincipled treatment i.e. semi-recognition of the so-called Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) has certainly been the best example of the latter.

Due to the semi-war situation, and an asymmetrical genesis, a referendum held only in Montenegro, not in Serbia, after only a week of public debate, blurred and deceptive referendum question, and many other similarly problematic details, the so-called FRY has been suffering from a very serious lack of legitimacy from its very beginning in 1992. Given its authoritarian, uncontrolled, and unlimited power, and its formal institutional dressing, Karl Friedrich’s famous label “facade federation” has certainly been the

25 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror most adequate description of this very special entity. Needless to say, Little Greater Serbia has permanently been behind the facade. When in 1997, under the pressure of the great anti-Milošević demonstration in Serbia, the coalition ended between the ruling parties of Serbia and Montenegro, however, even the facade began to fall down. All the remaining federal institutions have been pro- gressively and definitively usurped and destroyed by the newly established so-called pro-Yugoslav (meaning pro-Milošević) coalition made from the Greater Serbian political majority and Montenegrin pro-Greater Serbian political minority. The unconsti- tutional changes of July 6 as well as the so-called federal elections scheduled for September 24 this year, in fact, represent Slobodan Milošević’s last and probably final attempt to dress this new unitary political formula and state in legal constitutional cloth. Little wonder Montenegro refused to accept and participate into its own constitutional death. Unfortunately, only a small minority of political analysts, Daniele Conversi from CEU in Budapest for example, noticed that it has been the secession of Milošević’s Serbia, not of Montenegro, which has been going on under the noisy propaganda of the so-called Yugoslavia all this time.

No doubt, the so-called federal elections of September 24 this year could be an important or even decisive point of acceleration and clarification of the process. For better or worse, of course. Many factors make the end of September as well as the whole of October 2000 the riskiest period for Montenegro in last several years. Suffice it to say the long lasting and exhausting political crisis in Montenegro, the dangerous rise of regime violence within and out of Serbia, the lack of strategy of the international community, and Slobodan Milošević’s conceivable readiness to defend himself at any price after the indictment of the Hague Tribunal. If so, what really can be done “before the storm” to prevent its most destructive consequences?

It would be an unforgivable oversimplification to reduce the answer to this question to only a single piece of advise, or to

26 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović believe that any advice today may certainly prevent a Montenegrin conflict at all. It is quite possible that the conflict has been so persistently ignored and worsened during the last ten, and especially the last three years of missed opportunities that it is now too late to avoid it at all. Despite these two serious reservations, however, one crucial preventive move may be spelled out and recommended now. That is international legal as well as international political action for the final delegitimatization and delegalization of the so- called FRY in the UN and elsewhere. This action is not justifiable only because of the so-called FRY’s hidden Greater Serbian political nature that has been briefly elucidated in the first half of this short piece of paper. More importantly, the action is essential as the first and most crucial precondition for all other necessary and consequent preventive steps. One should carefully compare the preventive potential of the so-called explicit security guarantees in two different cases, namely before and after the critical delegitimatization and delegalization. It is quite logical and obvious that the potential would be much less in the first rather than in the second case. In other words, from the standpoint of natural, constitutional, and international law, Montenegro as a state would have a full right to ask and get international military and other help if it faced direct military attack by Milošević’s Greater Serbia in the coming days and months. Would it be enough to prevent or stop the attack? Would it work as an effective deterrent, or conversely as an ineffective and even backward step, however, this completely depends on the previous delegitimatization and delegalization of the so-called FRY.

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović After the Storm October 2000

There is no doubt that the spectacular fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime on October 5 this year brought a great change and relief to all. Given more than a decade of lasting frustration for the Serbian opposition and the international community as well, one may easily understand if not share the overwhelming euphoria, which has marked the first days and weeks after the fall. To continue with this euphoria, however, could be extremely harmful and dangerous.

In fact, there is no reason for any joy today. If the fall had happened ten years ago, one would have had a reason for that. After a decade of horrific wars, brutalities, and crimes, the only thing one may feel today is just a great relief and hope for further change. On the other hand, the old regime’s and Greater Serbian aggressive nationalistic legacy in Serbia as well as in the region as a whole has been so complex and difficult that the transition toward normal society and democracy in Serbia will be extremely complicated, troublesome, and long lasting. The complex, troublesome, and traumatic relationship between Montenegro and Serbia within the so-called Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) is an important part of this legacy.

To ignore this relationship and legacy may be totally and fatally counter-productive. The ongoing rush of the international community to recognize FRY instantly and urgently, before settling the relationship between Montenegro and Serbia, indicates many things, most importantly post-revolutionary euphoria, and late pangs of conscience for unjust and counter-productive international sanctions including the NATO bombardment in 1999 among others. If this sudden rush indicates some more serious and lasting

29 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror changes of the international community’s policy toward FRY i.e. Serbia and Montenegro, however, it could only bring back and reestablish on the scene the old and discredited pattern of “catastrophic short-termism” (John Roper).

To understand this warning, one should answer the question “what really is FRY today?” Metaphorically speaking, it is just an empty historical and political shell, a provisional entity and structure with less and less meaning, substance, and legitimacy. It was the unilateral and violent secession of Serbia, not of Montenegro, which destroyed SFRY at the beginning and FRY at the end of 1990s. Serbia and Montenegro are today two independent territories or the two de facto independent states, which desperately need international as well as internal recognition and regulation. Given the difficult and traumatic legacy of the past and the complex regional interplay of today, to final solution and regulation of the relationship between Montenegro and Serbia undoubtedly justifies and even requires strong international presence, control, and pressure. However, the point and direction of this presence, control, and pressure must be dramatically changed. Instead of forcing Montenegro to stay in FRY without any alternative, the international community should rather use its indisputable influence on Montenegrin leaders and authorities to provide the necessary respect for democratic standards and procedures in the process of reaching the final solution and regulation.

The Montenegrin right of self-determination is not only its natural, historical, international, and constitutional right. It is its most recent and rising political tendency and reality as well. Due to the severe economic measures, humiliating political pressures, and grave security threats, coming from Serbia in last several years, there is a clear and mounting pro-independence political trend as a response in Montenegro today. Two reliable polls from the first half of 2000 have shown that somewhere around two thirds of the Montenegrin constituency prefer either full independence or a very loose con-federal union with Serbia, which is dynamically

30 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović and potentially almost the same as full independence. Anti-constitutional and anti-Montenegrin coup which took place on July 6, as well, as the so-called federal election that was held on September 24 this year only strengthen this political tendency. A strong political majority in Montenegro successfully boycotted the so-called federal election and only a fifth of the constituency participated in it. Some of the first words and deeds of the newly elected president of FRY Vojislav Koštunica, expressing the old Greater Serbian arrogance toward Montenegro, have additionally strengthened the trend. In response, the government of Montenegro has just announced a new version of its Platform for establishing new relationships with Serbia, this time asking for full and equal international recognition and representation of both Montenegro and Serbia. No wonder that a referendum on the final legal status of Montenegro has become the main political issue of the day.

To ignore or repress this claim would certainly be shortsighted and therefore unwise. A problem that is ignored or repressed today can only escalate and recur tomorrow in a much worse state. The international community should not repeat this error in the case of Montenegro and Serbia. The cases of Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina have been quite convincing and tragic in this respect. The legitimate and pragmatic need for the urgent ending of one problem i.e. of international sanctions imposed on Serbia and Montenegro should be met in some creative and pragmatic way but without ignoring or repressing the Montenegrin problem that is equally real and legitimate. The same applies to the problem of Kosovo. It is much more realistic albeit extremely difficult to find some solution for Kosovo through negotiation between Kosovo and Serbia than through a fictitious Yugoslav triangle consisting of Kosovo, Serbia, and Montenegro. Instead of producing new illu- sions and problems for tomorrow, the international community should focus on the problems that may be solved today. Such a problem is that of Montenegro. With the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime in Belgrade, the only real and serious obstacle to the peaceful solution of this problem through a democratic and

31 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror safe referendum has finally ceased to exist. The opportunity for such a solution, which has occurred after the fall, must not be missed.

32 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Democratic FRY: Mission Improbable November 2000

A relatively wide albeit bizarre consensus between the Greater Serbian nationalists in Serbia and Montenegro and Western governments and diplomats has been built around the desirability of the so-called Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) after the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime in Belgrade. This consensus is an extremely complex structure encompassing very different political reasons and motivations. Some of these reasons and motivations have been only pragmatic in nature supporting the so-called FRY not because of any sincere belief in its substantial meaning but because until now it has been the only institution in existence and the stronghold of the new democratic forces in Serbia. Some of these reasons and motivations, however, have been of a much more serious and potentially dangerous nature showing a substantial misunderstanding of the real nature and perspective of this unusual political creature.

“Why disintegrate the so-called FRY into the two new independent states (Serbia and Montenegro) today if it is likely that these two states will integrate into the EU tomorrow?” This is the question which most typically and frequently reflects the latter kind of misunderstanding. Even a brief explanation of the false premises of this question, based on conventional but misleading wisdom and common but misguided sense, however, reveals the very substance of this misunderstanding. There is a multitude of these premises, but only two of them will be briefly spelled out and considered here. The first one is more obvious and superficial. Deliberately or spontaneously, it forgets that there is no FRY in political reality any longer. After the prolonged and creeping secession of Serbia in the period 1990-2000 and most remarkably

33 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror in the period 1997-2000, there is no existing and functioning common state of Serbia and Montenegro today. The question arises: how can something that in fact does not exist any more be disintegrated at all? Of course, this question is only rhetorical one. The only real and operational dilemma for Serbia and Montenegro today is whether firstly to reintegrate into some kind of common state and only after that to integrate into the EU, or to integrate into the EU directly, individually, and independently.

The second false premise is less clear, but more profound. Deliberately or spontaneously, this premise obscures the essential difference between the two types of integration, represented by the so-called FRY and the EU. This premise has become the main barrier to clear understanding of why and how the direct, individual, and independent integration of Montenegro and Serbia into the EU is a much more realistic and desirable solution for the strategic dilemma than it is for the other alternative. Realistically, what, if anything, could be the political cement used for joining Serbia and Montenegro in a common state? Could it be some renewed ideology of the old communist “brotherhood and unity”? No, this ideology definitely and irreversibly collapsed a decade ago. Could it be some renewed Yugoslavism? No, given the ethnic and political reality in Serbia and Montenegro today, this ideology has definitely and irreversibly withered away as well. “Yugoslavia” and “Yugoslavism” has become just a facade and charade. Last but not least, could it be Western liberalism, which has been so loudly accepted among the new political élites in Serbia and Montenegro? No, Western liberalism has been accepted among the new political élites in Serbia and Montenegro only rhetorically. Unfortunately, the number of those who sincerely and seriously share liberal ideas and values has remained desperately marginal and in any case insufficient for a reliable basis for a new common state. No, after the collapse of all the great ideologies of the XX century, the only remaining political substance, which could be used as a cement for joining Serbia and Montenegro in a common state today, is Greater Serbian nationalism. Despite all the aggres-

34 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović sive and confusing political propaganda, the Greater Serbian and not so-called Yugoslav nationalism has been the main message and meaning of the so-called federal election held on September 24 this year. On the other hand, the real nature of Greater Serbian nationalism, and of all similar nationalistic forces in the region as well, is not a mystery at all. This kind of integration has been reli- ably identified as pre-modern, anti-modern, and even a Neolithic (Traian Stoianovich, Balkan Worlds), by its very nature, and as a violent, inferior, and counter-productive one, through its pre- dictable effect in the region. Needless to emphasize, the EU type of integration has been identified as a totally different and opposite, modern, postmodern, superior, complex, and peaceful kind of integration. To sum up, the two types of integration, represented through the so-called FRY and the EU, are mutually and absolutely incompatible.

The conclusion is clear and self-evident. The so-called FRY has been the main obstacle to, and not the main road to the EU. Given the essential difference and incompatibility between the two, it is highly improbable to expect that the so-called FRY could ever become democratic in the future at all. On the contrary, due to its heavy Neolithic legacy, the so-called FRY, which is in fact a Greater Serbian surrogate, could only remain the last destabilizing force in the region as a whole. Therefore, the only support for the so-called FRY from the EU that may be understood and justified has been a short-term and pragmatic policy. Anything more than that may just be a terrible mistake.

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović The Last Balkan Triangle Montenegrin Referendum, New Serbian Nationalism, and International Supervision December 2000

The Post-Cold War Balkan chaos has proven to be just like the mysterious Bermuda triangle more than a decade after the collapse of communism. The most recent chapter of this process has been opened or better said intensified by the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime in Belgrade and by the consequent announcement from Montenegro that the referendum on Montenegrin independence will not be held until mid 2001. No wonder that the two new moments of the dynamic have additionally and importantly increased the degree of its infamous and constant complexity, flu- idity, and ambiguity. What is for sure, however, is that the three main political actors and players who will inter-actively and finally decide this extremely complex, fluid, and ambiguous process were and remain Montenegro itself, the new Serbian nationalism, and international community.

The announcement of and the beginning of the preparations for a referendum in Montenegro at the very end of 2000 could surprise only those domestic and foreign analysts and politicians whose knowledge of the matter is rather superficial and biased. Serious and reliable polls conducted in Podgorica as well as in Belgrade have clearly indicated not only a stubborn constancy but also a slow rise of the pro-independence stance in Montenegro after the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime in Serbia. No less importantly, for the first time in a decade, the pro-independence stance in Montenegro reached a critical absolute majority of more than 50% of the electorate immediately after the fall. This finding is the best proof that the only problem in the relationship between Montenegro and Serbia was never the problem of Slobodan

37 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror

Milošević’s regime alone. In fact, the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime in Serbia has had at least a twofold and contradictory effect on the pro- and anti-independence stances in Montenegro. On the one hand, the fall has brought a long expected relaxation and improvement of the general political and security situation in both republics as well as in the region as a whole. It is quite reasonable to suppose that this generally positive change has somewhat increased the percentage of those who under these new conditions are more ready to support the maintenance of a common state of Montenegro and Serbia. On the other hand, however, it is quite reasonable to suppose that the same general and positive change has simultaneously worked in the opposite direction as well. Namely, it is quite reasonable to suppose that a certain and not negligible number of citizens in Montenegro used to have some reservations toward independence, not because of independence itself, but because of the risks of violence and war under the threats of Slobodan Milošević’s aggressively nationalistic regime. Needless to say these citizens became much more free and ready to express their genuine political will after the fall of this regime, and this has certainly been the most important factor in the stability of the pro-independence stance in Montenegro in the last several months.

New Serbian nationalism has been the second major factor contributing to the resistance and even to the rise of pro-independence vote in Montenegro after the change in Belgrade in October 2000. To be quite honest, one must emphasize that the change in Belgrade has not been simple and one-dimensional at all. The change has also been extremely complex, fluid, and ambiguous. The new, victorious, and democratic coalition, the Democratic opposition of Serbia (DOS), is an extremely heterogeneous alliance of eighteen parties with greatly diverse and frequently contradictory political programs. Some of these parties have been anti-war, anti-nationalistic, and anti-authoritarian from the very beginning, but some of them have only changed their political rhetoric and clothes at the last moment. The traumatic legacy of

38 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović the old regime has been visible at every step. The most visible remnant of this legacy within the DOS itself is the sad fact that most of its leaders have not even initiated the process of ideological de-nazification of the Serbian State and society. For example, the majority of them have never criticized the old regime for engaging in, but only for losing four wars in the last decade. After Kosovo, Montenegro has remained the last external ground for the free expression of this negative legacy. Unfortunately, in its words and deeds toward Montenegro, in the last several months, the new DOS has demonstrated much more of the old hegemonic preten- sion than a new democratic policy. In fact, the new, post- Milošević Serbian nationalism could be described as a heavy mixture of the old, poisoned, and unchanged Greater Serbian nationalistic dream, on the one hand, and a new, adapted, and mostly, but only temporarily, peaceful political means for the realization of the dream of new circumstances. As far as the Montenegrin referendum is concerned, new Serbian nationalism has been exercising a relatively new political strategy that is obvious and transparent despite all its propaganda tricks. That is the strategy of a rhetorical and would-be democratic acceptance but simultaneously a hidden political obstruction and boycott of the referendum.

This strategy has been especially addressed and devoted to the international community, which is the third major actor of the last Balkan triangle. Given the prolonged and sensitive internal political stalemate, the role of the international community in the region in general, as well as in Montenegro and Serbia in particular, has become atypically important and influential. Having this in mind, the orientation of the strategy toward the international community has been quite logical and understandable. Unfortunately, the international community itself has not been sufficiently careful and critical toward new Serbian nationalism and its newly adopted strategy of obstruction and boycott. Intentionally or unintentional- ly, some of the most recent actions of the international community have even been encouraging to such a strategy, making a complex and complicated relationship between Montenegro and Serbia

39 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror become even more complex and complicated. However, the case of Montenegro deserves undiminished care and adequate treatment. Instead of taking sides with any of the two main parties in the dispute, the international community should rather be neutral in the process. Instead of pressing any of these two parts toward any concrete political solution, whatever it would be, an independent Montenegro, or a common state of Montenegro and Serbia, the international community should rather put all its legitimate pressure on both to use and respect only democratic ways and procedures in the process. Instead of a fait accompli of any kind, which is usually shortsighted and counter-productive, there is a crying need for more democracy, dialogue, and confidence as prerequi- sites for a democratic and safe referendum.

40 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Between East and West Two Ideas of Nation-State January 2001

After a year and half of waiting, the Montenegrin political platform has finally received its long expected Serbian response. Confronting Montenegrin explicit demand for independence with its own insistence on preservation of the common state, the Serbian side now ceaselessly and misleadingly repeats “Serbia is for the so-called FRY and therefore for EU integration, whereas Montenegro is for further fragmentation and disintegration of the region.” Unfortunately, a great deal of the international community takes by inertia this propaganda as truth. Needless to emphasize, the truth is quite opposite to that, and this short article should reveal and clarify this important but hidden and distorted fact.

Greater Serbian propaganda about the would-be Serbian pro-integration and the would-be Montenegrin anti-integration stance misses at least two great and crucial facts. First, after more than a decade of creeping secession by Serbia from the common state, Montenegro and Serbia in reality today function as two de facto independent states, with only a pair of still existing but hardly operating institutions (military and air-control) of the old federation. Compared with this undeniable reality, the Montenegrin platform, proposing a new and loose Commonwealth of Montenegro and Serbia as two independent and internationally recognized states with several common functions and institutions, offers more than the compared reality provides. On the other hand, any attempt by Belgrade to impose on Podgorica more than that by pressure or force, could only be counter-productive and lead to disintegration. Secondly, as has already been elaborated in this article, the only remaining political substance, which could be used as a cement for joining and holding Serbia and Montenegro

41 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror in a common state today, has been aggressive Greater Serbian nationalism. Given its notorious pre-modern nature, however, this political cement with the so-called FRY as its last remnant, has definitely become the main barrier, and not the main road to, modernity and post-modernity of EU integration.

The two great and crucial political facts stated above are quite capable and sufficient to demystify the ongoing and escalating Greater Serbian propaganda. Nevertheless, the propaganda has been just the tip of the iceberg, and as such, it certainly deserves much more attention. In fact, this propaganda offers an excellent opportunity for a deeper historical and sociological understanding of the whole complex of issues to which it structurally belongs. This understanding reaches back to the very dawn of modernization in Europe, or, more precisely, it reaches two different and par- adigmatic ideas of the nation-state coming from its dawn. As it is very well known, these two ideas were conceived, developed, and consolidated east and west of the river Elbe in Germany centuries ago. East of the Elbe, the idea of a nation-state remained essentially pre-modern, biological, (mono) ethnic, and violent in its substance until today (the so-called German pattern), whereas west of the Elbe, this idea historically evolved into its modern, territorial, political, and peaceful form (the so-called French pattern). Of course, it is not the race, culture, or any other one-dimensional factor, but the modernization itself, as a multi-dimensional social and historical process, which explains this unequal development in Europe.

Having in mind this conventional discrepancy between political rhetoric and reality, one can easily notice the difference between the two ideas of the nation-state in the current political dispute between Serbia and Montenegro. Rhetorically, Serbian propaganda sells its idea of a nation-state as a modern, multi-ethnic, and peaceful one. Under the fig leaf of this rhetoric, however, one can easily perceive the ugly face of pre-modern, mono-ethnic, and aggressive Greater Serbia. On the other hand, the Montenegrin

42 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović idea of nation-state in the dispute has been an essentially and genuinely modern, multi-ethnic, and peaceful one. This does not mean at all that Montenegro does not have its own heavy pre-modern and traumatic legacy. It has, but the case of a specific Montenegrin identity is a complex one, and it deserves at least a quick explanation. The identity of the Orthodox majority in Montenegro is a typical case of divided or double identity: a minority of 10-25% of this majority considers itself being Serbs or Montenegrin-Serbs, while the rest of the majority, which is in fact the overwhelming majority of Orthodox, considers itself to be only Montenegrins. No wonder, the former have regularly opted to ally with Serbs from Serbia, while the latter have equally regularly opted to ally with Muslims, Albanians, and other non-Serbian ethnic groups in Montenegro. This is a very simple but working political logic and the basis of the current Montenegrin multi-ethnic idea and project of the nation-state. This same simple political arithmetic explains why and how the two ideas of nation-state have been regularly and so far ceaselessly reproduced in Serbia and Montenegro. In other words, it is not a racial, cultural, civilizational, or any other similar factor of a would-be superiority or inferiority, but a concrete historical and political conjuncture, which explains Greater Serbian and Montenegrin ideas of the nation-state as two historically and sociologically different and opposed constructs.

Unfortunately, both the EU and US still strongly and explicitly support the Greater Serbian so-called FRY against an independent Montenegro. This support is a complex mixture of theoretical misunderstanding and political miscalculation. Theoretical misunderstanding lies in the lack of distinction between the two ideas of a nation-state. Political miscalculation, however, is just the most recent issue of the old shortsighted policy of the international community. Namely, both the EU and US again miscalculate that the cost of supporting the Greater Serbian so-called FRY would supposedly be less for them than the cost of supporting Montenegrin independence. This is a fatally wrong estimation. To understand this correctly and fully one must return to the distinc-

43 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror tion between the two ideas of nation-state.

The main political and security problems of Serbia, Montenegro, and Southeast Europe have been closely inter-linked. The deepest root of these problems lies in the pre-modern and aggressive nature and behavior of Greater Serbia. Yet, there is a problem for Greater Serbia alone. The problem of Greater Serbia lies in the fact that it is too strong to become a modern nation-state but too weak to become an empire. The problem of Montenegro is recip- rocal and intertwined with the problem of Greater Serbia. Montenegro is too strong to be overcome by Greater Serbia but too weak to stabilize fully and definitely its de facto independence. Of course, this is by definition a stalemate. In such a situation, the role of the international community becomes literally decisive, for better or worse. To support the Greater Serbian so- called FRY in such a situation means nothing less than investing in the endless instability of the region in the long run. On the other hand, Montenegro does not need any kind of external investment into its independence or nation-state building. Such fear is quite unjustified. Montenegro is ripe for independence in all relevant respects. The only real barrier on its road to full independence today comes from Greater Serbia or the so-called FRY.

It is true that the problem of Greater Serbia is historically complex and long-lived. However, the solution of this problem at this very moment is quite simple and plane. The international community should simply and plainly cease to support Greater Serbia under the name of the so-called FRY, press both Montenegro and Serbia to respect democratic standards in the process of reaching the solution for new relations, and guarantee the minimum of security necessary for all in this process. Through such an alternative policy, the international community would most likely and most cheaply achieve desired stability in the region. It would certainly help Montenegro to consolidate its modern, multi-ethnic, and peaceful nation-state. Simultaneously, it would positively help Serbia to emancipate itself from its own pre-modern, mono-ethnic,

44 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović and aggressive Greater Serbian project. In the end, by helping Montenegro and Serbia, it would definitely help the region as a whole in its pursuit of real and long-term stability within a stable and ultimately united and democratic Europe.

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Europe versus Europe February 2001

If January’s EU statement about the current Montenegrin question left any doubt, after its February repetition, expressed in an almost non-diplomatic and offensive manner, there is no dilemma about the question any more. “FRY without alternative and at any (Montenegrin) cost” has become an explicit and official EU policy in this matter. Exactly ten years after the violent dissolution of the SFRY, we are witnessing now an astonishing, breath-taking resurrection of the same bad policy in the case of the so-called FRY. With one important difference, of course: SFRY used to be a complex, complicated, and eventually unsustainable, but in its time truly existing and functioning state, whereas the so-called FRY has been always and entirely a facade, fake, and fictitious state. This is why we must give more extensive attention to this most recent and astonishing EU stance regarding the troublesome relationships between Montenegro and Serbia today.

It is difficult to say from which standpoint this stance is more problematic and wrong, from the standpoint of objective historical fact, international and internal law, and universal justice, or from a standpoint less objective and universal but not less influential and effective political pragmatism of so-called realpolitik. In any case, the contradiction between the overall facts, law, and justice, on the one hand, and the EU stance regarding Montenegrin question, on the other hand, is quite clear and evident. The Montenegrin right to self-determination is internationally and internally quite undeniable. The right is internationally based on the UN Charter of 1945 in general and on the EU Badinter principles from 1992 in particular. Internally i.e. constitutionally, it is based on the constitutions of the then newly established FRY and Montenegro of 1992. Given these undeniable fundamentals, the EU stance does not

47 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror deny the Montenegrin right directly and openly, but denies it indirectly and de facto, by its ceaseless and baseless insistence on the solution for current problems of Montenegro and Serbia “within FRY”. Instead of an open and direct but unlawful denial, the EU stance employs a set of pragmatic and short-term political and security arguments against Montenegrin right to self-determination, and especially against its announced referendum on independence. Montenegro has been explicitly warned and implicitly accused that such a move would be unilateral, too hasty, and destabilizing for regional stability and security. How much these warnings and accusations have been wrong and unjust in case of Montenegro, however, one can easily realize from the following notorious facts. Montenegro has been the only one of the six republics of the former SFRY (beside Serbia) that has not rushed into the referendum and independence exactly for the sake of its own and regional stability and security. It especially did not rush into a referendum and independence in the most dangerous but for such moves the most favorable time during its semi-war conflict with the regime of Slobodan Milošević of Serbia 1997-2000. It resisted declaring its formal and full independence even when such a move could not be considered and qualified differently but as a logical and lawful response to certain unilateral moves from Serbia, such as it was the so-called constitutional coup committed on July 6, 2000. However, the coup was only the culmination of the process. In fact, the entire so-called FRY, from its very beginning, and through its various and dramatic phases, has been, and remained only, one great and prolonged unilateral move, “atypical central secession” (of Serbia from SFRY and FRY), to use the diagnosis offered by Professor Daniele Conversi. To warn and accuse Montenegro finally of any unilateral move means nothing else but to be totally blind or cynical.

The blindness and cynicism, however, have a much deeper root. The root lies in the sphere of hidden but false premises of conventional so-called realpolitik. The main false premise of the realpolitik in the current dispute between Montenegro and Serbia is its

48 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović superficial and mistaken belief that the main, if not the only, problem of the dispute has been a matter of the mere personality or regime of Slobodan Milošević. However, the main problem of the dispute has never been that of mere personality or regime of this or any other Serbian or Montenegrin politician, but of the system or even physics of the relationship between Montenegro and Serbia as such. Namely, a federation, or any other common state, consisting of only two units, which are extremely unequal and dis- proportionate, as Montenegro and Serbia in all relevant aspects, has been an almost impossible political structure. In such a situation, Greater Serbian, anti-Montenegrin nationalism, as well as the Montenegrin, anti-Greater Serbian, pro-independence movement, have been the two structurally conditioned and unavoidable but incompatible political factors and forces. To project and propose “democratic Montenegro within a democratic FRY” in such a situation means nothing less than to ignore the described social physics and incompatibility. To require of Montenegro to stay “within FRY” in this situation means nothing less than asking of it willingly and voluntarily to commit a suicide.

Besides, the described social physics contains hidden but crucial key to a just and durable peace in the region. Quite contrary to what Greater Serbian propaganda argues today, the key to the peace in the region lies in a peaceful dissolution, not in the endless maintenance of an unfortunate and fictitious federation. Ten years of post-Yugoslav wars has been too short a period to be easily ignored or forgotten. It is very well known that aggressive Greater Serbian nationalism has been one of the most important if not the most important factor and cause of the wars. On the other hand, our current social physics proves that as long as any kind of common state of Montenegro and Serbia survives aggressive Greater Serbian ideas and aspirations will remain alive and ready to repeat its deadly enterprise. Consequently, a real domino threat has been embodied into the so-called FRY, which in fact is a kind of Little Greater Serbia, and as such a time-bomb for regional peace and stability, not in terms of the independent Montenegro, as Greater

49 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror

Serbian propaganda ceaselessly agitates and the EU mistakenly accepts. Quite conversely, independent Montenegro plus independent Serbia equals the death of Greater Serbia and the beginning of a just and durable peace in the region. This is a simple but pivotal formula for the post-Cold War political dynamics in the Balkans.

In this context, current EU support for the so-called FRY (Little Greater Serbia) irresistibly reminds us of its unfortunate support for Slobodan Milošević in the time of the Dayton Peace Accord. Except the complexity of the region and the acceleration of the process are much greater today than in the days of the Dayton Peace Accord. Not longer than a couple of weeks after open and explicit EU support for the so-called FRY (Little Greater Serbia) in January and February 2001, a serial of obvious and detrimental political counter-effects were produced between Montenegro and Serbia as well as within Montenegro itself. Instead of stimulating all relevant actors to democratic dialogue and compromise, which has been its repeated main political objective, such an open and non-neutral EU stance has directly encouraged political aggressiveness from the so-called pro-Yugoslav i.e. Pro-Greater Serbian side. The rise of this aggressiveness has been most obvious in the process of negotiation and preparation for the early election and referendum on independence. Under certain external and internal pressures, the pro-independence political forces in Montenegro have already made at least two very important procedural concessions. First, they have accepted that early parliamentary election to be held before any referendum on independence, despite the fact that these elections have not been legally obligatory. Second, they have accepted that the elections will be held on April 22, not at the end of March, as had been initially proposed. The other side, however, has not responded in the same direction. Encouraged by the explicit and one-sided EU stance, the so-called pro-Yugoslav i.e. Pro-Greater Serbian forces have not made even the smallest concession to the other side, and even worse, they have already announced a boycott of the referendum, though they had accepted

50 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović it earlier. Obviously, instead of advancing, current EU policy has deteriorated the Montenegrin-Serbian as well as internal Montenegrin processes.

Yet, the most negative and indicative aspect and consequence of the policy has been its total, hasty, unwise, and dangerous shift in ongoing European-Montenegrin political alliances. Namely, due to the policy, in only a couple of weeks and months, a totally new, strange, insincere, perverse, and disturbing alliance between the EU and the pro-Greater Serbian forces in Montenegro and Serbia, now under the guise of the so-called FRY, has been built and emerged. On the other hand, and in the same short period, an extremely explicit and fixed EU stance against Montenegrin independence has undeservingly punished and pushed into a kind of diplomatic semi-isolation exactly those political forces in Montenegro that have persistently been pro-Western and pro- European in their political orientation. A bizarre political phenomenon has suddenly and unfortunately, (re) emerged: Europe versus Europe. Fortunately, however, this aberration cannot last today as it lasted in Bosnia and Herzegovina yesterday. Due to the greater density of space and the acceleration of the process, “catastrophic short-termism” (John Roper) of any wrong policy is much more evident and rapid today than it was yesterday. A crying need exists for an alternative EU policy in the case of Montenegro based on such an objective change, not merely on some pro-independence Montenegrin stance. Briefly and again, the EU should support neither the so-called FRY nor independent Montenegro in advance. Instead, it should support the democratic process, its principles, procedures, and standards, and be ready to accept its result, no matter what it would be, independent Montenegro or some common state of Montenegro and Serbia. Early Montenegrin parliamentary elections on April 22 are the best and last chance for such a necessary policy change.

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović New Miscalculation March 2001

The discrepancy between public rhetoric and shady realpolitik is a standard phenomenon of international politics. What one may find and experience today in the Balkans as a unique phenomenon, however, is a culmination of the discrepancy. In such a situation, one simply can not avoid a feeling of great and discouraging frustration. On the one hand, there is continuous rhetoric about a would-be adherence to the principles of international law and to the stability and even sanctity of international borders in the region. On the other hand, and at the same time, however, there is growing evidence showing that some quite relevant and mighty international actors (great powers) are just trying to initiate a new cycle of an old and compromised pattern of ethnic and power realpolitik in the region. March 2001 was especially rich and active in that respect. The continued policy of the unsustainable and dangerous status quo in Kosovo and Montenegro from previous months was accompanied by several new and even more disturbing novelties. It suffices just to mention two of them: an effective beginning of the announced withdrawal of US troops from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and indications of the reemergence of some old and ugly ideas of the would-be impossibility of any multi-ethnic state and democracy in this republic and in the Balkans as a whole. In such a framework, even one David Owen a notorious Greater Serbian lobbyist from the pre-Dayton times, felt quite comfortable and free to launch a new proposal for territorial partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro in favor of Serbia. Little wonder, under the pressure of these and other similar circumstances and facts, the whole region, and especially the fragile Macedonian multi-ethnic state, faced new dangerous instability and the risk of war in the second half of March.

53 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror

On the surface, the described regional instability, and especially the discrepancy that largely contributes to the instability in the first quarter of 2001, irresistibly reminds one of a similar regional instability and discrepancy in 1991. Profoundly, however, there is at least one important difference between the two, which comes from the significantly changed international and regional system and life. Namely, in 1991, immediately after the end of communism and the Cold War, a victorious West and NATO found themselves in a desperate search for a new great enemy, reason of further existence, and domestic and international legitimacy. The post-Cold War Balkan chaos of the 1990s proved to be an ideal ground for such a cause and enterprise, even if the pattern of the search was not simple and quick but zigzagged and slow. Concisely, the pattern may be described as a cascade of at least three distinct stages: initial and shortsighted passivity of the major international actors, consequent and dangerous escalation of the regional crisis, and finally the heavy political and military involvement of the actors in the crisis. The signs of renewed US and international isolationism and related old realpolitik in the Balkans in 2001, however, have been of an entirely different kind of behavior of the same actors ten years ago. The main difference is this: in 1991, the signs were a pretext of a coming escalation and involvement, whereas in 2001 the signs are most probably a pretext of a desired fast and cheap pacification and withdrawal. The difference must not be blurred by surface similarity.

One may easily understand why the West is trying today to reduce its military and finance presence and expenditures in the Balkans as much and as soon as possible. After all, to reduce expenditures and costs is the most fundamental law of the capitalist system in its essence and in its everyday operation. Any premature and excessive withdrawal of the international community and forces from the region, however, might be extremely dangerous and men- acing not only for the region but for Europe and world as well. Needless to say and emphasize, that systemic shortsightedness used to be the most frequent and damaging error of international

54 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović community in this region through the last ten years. Only a few years ago, Slobodan Milošević was carelessly accepted and pro- moted by the West as the “main factor of peace and stability in the Balkans”. To accept and promote the new president of the so- called FRY Vojislav Koštunica as a new “main factor” of that kind, for example, and to return to the old realpolitik of numberless but useless touch-and-go compensations from the 1990s in general, might be a new and great miscalculation. Despite all recent improvements, it is very well known, the whole region is still far from being consolidated. Therefore, there is a crying need for continued international caution and precaution. Instead of mis- calculating and dreaming about some fast and cheap but dangerously unstable peace and stability, the international community, especially the EU and US should rather proceed with the Stability Pact and similar long-term economic and political projects and investments. Instead of being tempted to return to the old and stupid realpolitik of countless but worthless compensations, they should rather continue to build one alternative, more holistic, and more lasting approach and policy. In this context, one may easily imagine and design the place for Montenegro as well. Instead of being treated as food for the Greater Serbian appetite and routine compensation for an old and cynical international realpolitik, Montenegro should be treated quite differently and positively, as a testing ground for this new and alternative approach and policy. Instead of being its handicap, as in the old realpolitik, in this new and alternative framework, Montenegrin famous small size may become its main comparative advantage. Complex testing is much easier in a small rather than in a large system or country. Small is controllable, not only beautiful, to paraphrase an old postmodern slogan at the very end of this short essay.

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Dances With Wolves April 2001

While most of the countless Balkan experts carefully observe and study the outcome of the Montenegrin election held on April 22, our short analysis focuses here on some phenomena from the first half of the month, which are less noticeable but not less important for the whole case. Our story begins in the early morning hours on April 1, when Slobodan Milošević, called “the Balkan butcher”, was finally arrested. Given the notorious and numerous connections of the former Serbian and Yugoslav president with many very important persons from international and national politics in the last ten-fifteen years, one could reasonably expect a real political charade of their different public and secret actions and reac- tions after the arrest. Really, everything before and after the arrest was indicating the charade, from the spectacular and televised albeit messy police action, via day by day contradictory Hague Tribunal statements, up to the ridiculous and even offensive but pretty indicative accusation of “corruption and abuse of power”. Everything was going to cover the case with the complexity and conspiracy of silence, when the ghost from the past suddenly reemerged in Montenegro at the very peak of the ongoing parliamentary election campaign. Božidar Bojović, one of the leaders of the so-called pro-Yugoslav coalition, and Slobodan Milošević’s former coalition partner, launched an almost forgotten and open hate speech against Montenegrin Muslims or Bosniaks in Bijelo Polje on April 8. If you vote for an independent Montenegro, and if Montenegro really become independent, you will be fixed as the main culprit, this was his main message, intimidation, and threat to them. Coincidentally or not, it is a fact that only a day after this ugly but clarifying political address, on April 9, the EU reiterated its unambiguous and rigid support for the so-called pro-Yugoslav forces in Montenegro, to which our hate hero Božidar Bojović

57 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror belongs as well.

Coincidentally or not, the world has been convincingly reminded of an old and obscure connection, the one between the democratic governments of the West and the fascist forces of the Balkans. Nothing new in the world, one could cynically say. Really, only six years ago, immediately after the Dayton Peace Accords had been reached, Slobodan Milošević was widely celebrated in the West as “the main factor of peace in the Balkans”. What is relatively new and intriguing in our most recent case is an uneasy realization that the connection may operate though its main actor is sent to jail. Such a reality raises or at least makes more urgent the question on the real nature of the connection. The most frequent but erroneous answer dealing with the question usually falls into this or that kind of famous conspiracy theory. Our most recent experience, which has been mentioned above, however, offers an excellent opportunity to address and understand the question in a more adequate and realistic framework.

There is no dilemma that one part of the connection is made of pure conspiracy, a direct and self-serving plot between local Balkan fascists and some of European and Western so-called realists in international politics. There is no dilemma as well, however, that the largest and dominating part of the connection is not made of such a direct and secret, conspiracy-like, but rather of an indirect and spontaneous, chemistry-like matter. The main element of this spontaneous matter is one kind of systemic myopia, shortsightedness, and short-termism, which so frequently and almost inescapably leads Europeans and Westerners to repeat their same blasphemous error, alliance, and cooperation with aggressive nationalists, i.e. fascists in the Balkans. On the other hand, the exponential rise of density of the international system as well as the speed of historical process, which is one of the most important changes of our time, makes the systemic error of shortsightedness become increasingly detrimental and eventually fatal.

58 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović

The unfortunate pattern of this complex error usually consists of four sequences. First, the international community usually starts with an initial oversight of the hidden but rising potential of local (regional) crisis, and with a consequent and total but wrong passivity regarding the crisis. Second, because of previous negli- gence, the crisis normally escalates beyond any easy and ordinary control. Third, the so-called realists begin to deal with local and regional troublemakers, aggressive nationalists, and even fascists, entering a kind of “unholy alliance” with them. Fourth, realizing that the problem cannot be solved with them, the international community, i.e. great powers, replace the so-called realists with the so-called idealists and begin the final and “holy war” against the “evil”. What is really astonishing here and today is a fact that only a week after the end of the fourth sequence of the previous error (the arrest of Slobodan Milošević), the international community entered into the third sequence of new error (support for hate politics of the so-called FRY). Instead of endlessly wondering and crying over the fact, however, it is much more intelligent and useful for us to keep elucidating and understanding the phenomenon.

A thin red line divides the initial and wrong passivity of the first from the consequent and even worse activity of the third sequence. Little wonder the international community crosses the line so frequently. What encompasses and carries both wrong passivity and wrong activity of the international community is one kind of natu- ralistic ideology. Used and abused by central powers in the peripheral and semi-peripheral zones of world politics, and in the Balkans of course, this ideology systematically misrepresents social actors in general and aggressive nationalists in particular as would-be natural forces. Given this false but deceitful and dangerous portrait, a thin red line may easily be crossed. Both passivity and activity may be comfortably self-justified and self-legitimized as nothing else but the two different and equally acceptable modes of coping with the same natural forces. However, the difference between the two kinds of behavior exists and must not be overlooked. Let us look at the difference in the most recent case of

59 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror ours. One thing is to warn Montenegro against Greater Serbian aggression and destabilization from within and abroad, as the international community regularly and reasonably reminds Montenegro through its rhetoric and concern about Montenegrin and regional “stability and security”. Quite the other thing is, however, to support aggressive and destabilizing forces openly and directly, as the international community and major powers unfortunately and ceaselessly does even today. The connection between our hate heroes and international realpolitik is the last warning and chance. A thin red line is just about to be crossed one more time. It must not be allowed to happen because this time it would not be damaging only for Montenegro but for the international community as well.

60 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Shocking Connection May 2001

A thin red line has just been crossed. Last month the “Dances With Wolves” of this column metaphorically warned against the possible and dangerous destabilization of the whole region of Southeast Europe if the international community shortsightedly continues to support aggressive Greater Serbian nationalists in Podgorica and Belgrade, as it openly and directly did during the Montenegrin April election campaign. Unfortunately, and as we know now, the destabilization was quick and prompt. The same aggressive political forces, murderous slogans (“Kill, kill!”), black flags (a notorious symbol of death), and newly composed songs (“One day we shall kill at least three hundred Muslims!”), which was firstly heard and seen in Montenegro during the campaign, reappeared in Bosnia and Herzegovina shortly afterwards. The same actors and threats escalated in Bijelo Polje in Montenegro on April 8, and after that in Trebinje and Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzegovina on May 5 and 7, could be overlooked only by those who are totally biased or politically blind. The horrifying spillover of Greater Serbian nationalistic aggression and violence has become more than evident, and the blasphemous connection between Western democratic governments and Balkan neo-fascists more than explicit. The image of this blasphemy was finally crowned by two symbolic and self-speaking events. The first one was a bizarre but indicative press conference of the so-called pro- Yugoslav (in fact pro-Greater Serbian) coalition in Montenegro, organized at the very peak of April election, and “diplomatically” attended by US Belgrade ambassador William Montgomery in person. The second one was an even more bizarre but also indicative ceremony of the “Statesman of the Year” prize awarded to Vojislav Koštunica only a couple of days after his Bosnian spiritual and political followers had shocked the world by their deadly

61 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror enterprise in Trebinje and Banja Luka.

The most recent development (deterioration) in the region has strongly confirmed our initial and reiterated hypothesis about a rapid rise of density of international space and acceleration of historical time. Really, only such a rise can plausibly explain how it has been possible at all that Montenegro, one of the smallest entities in the region, has suddenly become an almost perfect mirror of some of the largest problems and structures of the world-system as a whole. In fact, Montenegrin mirror has only reminded us of some of the deepest, strongest, and hidden facts and contradictions of the system. The very shocking connection between the central democratic governments of the West and the peripheral fascist forces of the Balkans and Montenegro has been just the most recent version of one of the oldest characteristics of historical capitalism. It suffices just to mention the most notorious but forgotten facts. Historical colonialism and neo-colonialism, imperialism and neo-imperialism, World War I and II, Italian fascism and German Nazism, holocaust and ethnic cleansing, Auschwitz and Srebrenica, these and similar facts come from historical capitalism, not from some pre-capitalist, Balkan, African, or Asian system or civilization (as numberless huntingtonians today misleadingly imply). Given these and similar facts, the real question here and now is how to explain and understand the large scale and systemic nature of the oblivion of the facts, not the very facts themselves.

Theoretical understanding of the problem is a necessary but still not a sufficient condition or precondition for its practical solution. Incidentally, the Montenegrin mirror offers an excellent opportunity for both its theoretical and practical elucidation. To be more precise, the Montenegrin case 2001 has made clear, even more practically than theoretically, how the international community has increasingly become a part of the problem in the Balkans and not its solution (if we may paraphrase this fashionable and more than arrogant neo-colonial phrase). The irony of the case lies in the fact

62 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović that the community has directly and decisively contributed to the very opposite of what has been its own official and major regional policy and aim. Namely, in the name of stability, it has directly and decisively supported the main destabilizing force in the region, aggressive Greater Serbian nationalism in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the other hand, the lesson from this last grand international failure is quite clear as well, and we shall repeat it again, willingly and deliberately taking the risk of being too verbose in this column. If it is not too late, the international community should do in Montenegro in the second half of 2001 exactly the opposite of what it did here in the first half of this year. Instead of shortsighted and one-sided support for one or any of the two main sides in Montenegro, it should finally employ the only productive and healthy approach, and that is the equal and unbiased pressure on both sides to respect fully the universal and objective democratic procedures, standards, and norms. The physics of equal pressure is the most important and inevitable external precondition for major internal Montenegrin actors to initiate, proceed, and complete a difficult but indispensable process of internal confidence building and conflict resolution. It is not necessary to emphasize, this last process is the most important and inevitable internal precondition for just and durable peace and stability in Montenegro and elsewhere. In the continuing absence of such physics, however, any possible rhetoric of dialogue and democracy could only remain lip service, demagoguery, and charade, in other words a facade for further Greater Serbian destabilization and deterioration of the situation in Montenegro and Southeast Europe.

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Curse of Involvement June 2001

In the last several decades, the old and rigid XIX century distinction between the center and the periphery of the modern world- system has increasingly become obsolete and inadequate. At the same time, though, the distinction has remained a dominant attrib- ute of unchanged institutions of the system, and that has become one of its deepest and greatest contradictions today. This has been so obvious through the whole course of the Post-Cold War Balkan crisis. In the first phase of that crisis (1991-95), the most frequent and devastating sort of error of the international community, as is very well known, used to be the error of non-involvement, which was based on the very assumption of the distinction between the center and periphery. It was the error of “too little, too late, inadequate” behavior. The cataclysmic price of this type of error was the quite notorious. The Dayton-Paris Peace Accords in 1995 marked the beginning and the Kosovo conflict in 1999 signaled the culmination of the second phase and type of behavior of international community in the Post-Cold War Balkan crisis. The contradictory mixture of some new positive elements of a more active and responsible involvement, on the one hand, and of some old and new errors of both involvement and non-involvement of the international community, on the other, has been the primary and distinctive characteristic of this new phase and type. In the more recent times, the two former Yugoslav units, Macedonia and Montenegro, have joined the two others, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, in their painful role as the testing ground of these new contradictions and policies.

In the case of Macedonia, this heavy and confusing mixture has been much more developed, evident, and transparent. One can hardly deny the appearance of some important elements of a new,

65 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror more active, and more preventive international policy in its current political crisis. At the same time, however, one can hardly over- look the prolonged and destructive legacy of the Kosovo conflict in the crisis as well. The spillover of spontaneous and organized Greater Albanian ethnic violence has even been physically observable. After all, the NATO and CIA role in military building, recruitment, and training of Albanian rebels, through the KLA as well as through its numerous military and paramilitary isotopes in Macedonia and elsewhere, has been anything but secret. Less visible on the surface but not less important in the depth, economic and political rivalries between the EU and US have additionally contributed to the conflict as well. Of course, only further development can show which of these two opposing forces will eventually prevail.

In the case of Montenegro, the mixture has been less developed and evident, but not less attractive and relevant. Before the fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime in Serbia in October 2000, the involvement of the international community in the Montenegrin process was predominantly positive and constructive, albeit mostly designed to weaken and crush the dictatorship in Belgrade, and not specifically to support Montenegrin right as such. After October 5, though, the involvement changed and become inconsis- tent, one-sided, and counterproductive. This kind of negative change and involvement definitely culminated in April and May 2001, during the premature parliamentary election, when major international actors and players, especially the EU and US, openly and directly supported the three parties of the so-called pro- Yugoslav, i.e. pro-Greater Serbian coalition. In one moment, this open and direct support began to remind one irresistibly of the days of the “unholy alliance” between the West and Slobodan Milošević himself. Even worse, however, at other moments, international involvement began to pass from a purely political to essentially an ethnic sphere, and to intervene in the very complex and sensitive domain of specific Montenegrin identity. Montenegrin ethnic identity has been a kind of peripheral and late

66 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović ethnic identity, and like all other ethnic identities of that kind, this ethnic identity is still in the process of crystallization. Due to that fact, it has been still much more open, unstable, and divided, than closed, stable, and integrated. The international resonance and consequence of this internal Montenegrin specificity has almost been immediate and detrimental. Namely, given the described openness and vulnerability of the process, the international involvement in internal Montenegrin political process has auto- matically and inescapably transmuted itself into a kind of direct siding with the Greater Serbian, anti-Montenegrin ethnic engineering. To conclude briefly, in the time of super-high density and interdependence, any erroneous or negligent intervention easily ends in some kind of Frankenstein consequence.

How to formulate now one of the most important dilemmas of our time, the dilemma of international involvement or non-involvement? Maybe the clue is in the title of this text. Yet, the title should be understood correctly and precisely. Namely, the curse from the title should be understood as a challenge, not as a punish- ment as it is usually understood. In fact, to be involved or not to be involved, it is not a real and productive question today at all. Due to the super-high density of the contemporary international order, and quite independently from some pure will or reluctance, the major international actors have been simply forced to be involved in any serious regional crisis today. This is no longer a matter of their free choice, but a matter of their intelligence. To put it differently, both international involvement and non-involvement bring real and serious political consequences and responsibilities. So, for example, a mere rhetorical announcement of the new Washington administration to withdraw US troops from the Balkans several months ago quite concretely and effectively provoked a chain-reaction of Greater Albanian, Greater Serbian, and Greater Croatian ethnic aggression in the region as a whole. At the same time, new administration explicitly warned that the US would not support the process of building new and weak nation- states in the region any more. Implicitly, the warning was

67 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror addressed against pro-independent movements in Montenegro and Kosovo. However, the warning was totally misguided and wrong. After more than a decade of ceaseless and aggressive Greater Serbian oppression, a much greater amount of external support and force is needed today to keep these two units under Serbian control, than it is needed by these two units to obtain and protect their full independence. In a word, the dilemma between involvement and non-involvement is a false dilemma today. The only real and intelligent dilemma today is the dilemma between the different kinds, good or bad, effective or abortive, timely or late, productive or counter-productive international involvement.

68 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Imagining an Alternative July 2001

Montenegrin Mirror’s analyses from the last twelve months and especially its analysis and prediction from November last year (“Democratic FRY Mission Improbable”) have been greatly confirmed by the most recent development in Montenegro and Serbia. The dramatic episode of Slobodan Milošević’s extradition on June 28 as well as his first arrogant appearance before the Hague Tribunal on July 3 this year most clearly revealed the very essence of the so-called FRY. Firstly, these two events have decisively fer- mented and accelerated to deep and bitter political polarization within the camp of the so-called pro-Yugoslav forces in Serbia and Montenegro, and a further erosion of political legitimacy of the so-called FRY as a whole. The extradition has become not only a cause of the crisis and fall of the current federal government but also a cause of the first and most serious political fight between the pro and anti modernizing forces in Serbia alone. The only real political cement joining Montenegro and Serbia in a common structure has definitely proven to be the anti-modern and aggressive Greater Serbian nationalism, and this one has definitely proven to be detrimental for Serbia, not only for Montenegro. The extradition has demonstrated this crucial political fact with an almost experimental way and strength. Secondly, the extradition affair has clearly demonstrated that the so-called FRY forces has definitely become one of the main sources of regional insecurity and instability, and not of regional security and stability, as it has been usually and falsely claimed by its last internal and international supporters. The famous status quo between Montenegro and Serbia, which has been widely favored as a would-be precondition for peace and stability in the region, has in fact turned into the worst nightmare and threat to peace and stability. On June 28, it was a courageous act by the government of Serbia that finally and

69 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror decisively solved the crisis, whereas the so-called pro-Yugoslav forces did their best to save Slobodan Milošević from extradition. Thirdly, the crisis has positively revealed and convincingly confirmed the overall rationality and superiority of Montenegro and Serbia organized as two independent states as opposed to the so- called FRY or to any other common state of the two republics. The extradition case has not been just an accident, but on the contrary a lawful expression of many deep physical, cultural, and political incompatibilities between the two republics and consequent improbabilities or even impossibilities of any kind of common state. Consequently, and for the first time in their century long traumatic history, this kind of experience, consciousness, and opinion has become quite regular and frequent not only in Montenegro, but in Serbia as well.

In spite of all these political clarifications, however, Montenegro and Serbia continue to live in a prolonged, delusive, and haz- ardous political stalemate called FRY. How to explain such a bizarre political stalemate? No dilemma at all, internal political factors explain a significant part of this stubborn political fact. Such factors are: the democratically re-born, re-packed, and re- legitimized Greater Serbian nationalism in both Serbia and Montenegro, the relative political weakness of real pro-democratic and anti-nationalistic forces in Serbia, and the burdensome political confusion and resultant low level of coalition capability of the pro-independence forces in Montenegro. An increasingly significant part of the fact, though, can be explained exclusively and only with certain international political factors, more precisely by their persistent preference and insistence on the so-called FRY. Compared with the previous ones, however, international factors are much more complex and complicated in their substance and nature. To reach this complexity, one should carefully distinguish at least between the two components, political rhetoric, and political reality. Rhetorically, international factors advocate the case of the so-called FRY by repeatedly emphasizing such arguments like regional security and stability, respect for international borders,

70 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović and the rule of law. Given the fact that evidence on the ground mostly opposes these rhetorical arguments, however, one must dig much deeper inside to find the real causes and reasons for such a prolonged and tough international support for the so-called FRY. Under a political facade and rhetoric about the rule of law, human rights, and democracy, in the hidden sphere of hard and brutal realpolitik, one may find quite different and even opposite causes and reasons for this support. Most of all, one may find there an old and very well known mythology of the so-called regional hegemonic stability, based on the Greater Serbian political idea, the selective and arbitrary use of law, and the deliberate and systemic ambiguity and openness of the framework. In a word and in spite of all cheerful and noisy New World Order rhetoric, one may find there a lot of an old and very well known Neo-Colonial Pattern.

The problem of the pattern lies in the fact that it has become irreversibly dysfunctional and obsolete, and that it has become such not only for the controlled (weak peripheral states in the Balkans), but for the controller (strong central states and the world-system as a whole) as well. The pattern definitely needs an urgent and intelligent change, which should affect both its theoretical and practical side. There is a crying need not only for more and a better political will and efficiency, but also for more and better understanding and imagination. We are living in a creative time in the narrowest sense of the word. An alternative is not given and known, it should be creatively imagined and engineered. The current Montenegrin and Serbian dilemma is quite illustrative in that respect. One or two seats in the UN, which is the main political dilemma of Montenegro and Serbia today, may seem insurmountable only from the standpoint of an old Westphalian system of absolute and unlimited sovereignty. The Montenegrin Platform for the redefinition of the relationship between Montenegro and Serbia from the end of 2000 is based on the new Post-Westphalian concept of relative and limited sovereignty and on a new and equally Post-Westphalian concept of associative and democratic

71 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror

(not exploitative and subordinating) inter-dependence. Whether this new platform will be realized as it is imagined or it will end into some new abortive mess, however, largely depends on certain and adequate international support.

Montenegro is one of the smallest entities in the region, and due to that fact, the international community currently treats it as less important if not negligible polity. However, there is nothing more erroneous than that today. Today we do not live in the domain of old international geopolitics, but in the realm of new global polity, in which mere physical measurements of different entities do not mean what they meant yesterday. Moreover, in some specific circumstances, the small scale of one entity may be its comparative advantage, not a curse. Such is the case of Montenegro today. Given its extreme and unique internal diversity, multi-ethnicity, and multi-culturality, this tiny Balkan and Mediterranean entity has served excellently as a small mirror reflecting great world processes and actors. On the other hand, Montenegrin physical smallness offers various practical opportunities for creative social and political engineering as well. A complex transformation from an old Westphalian to a new Post-Westphalian concept of state and sovereignty, for example, would certainly be much easier and more obtainable if tested in such a small and not in some larger unit. Small is useful, not only beautiful, to paraphrase a famous postmodern saying again.

72 Part Two Articles

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Yugoslav Disintegration In A World-Systems Perspective June 1992

“A man is born gentle and weak. At his death he is hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap. At their death they are withered and dry. Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death. The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life. The hard and strong will fall. The soft and weak will overcome.” (Laotse, in Galtung, 1989: 6)

1. Introduction: European 1992

Surprisingly for some but not for all, the famous and long expected European 1992 began with a sharp Janus-faced contrast: the West European political and economic transnational integration versus the East European, most notably the U.S.S.R.’s and Yugoslav state disintegration.

This sharp contrast has already become a major intellectual and political challenge, paradox, and puzzle. It has already given rise to a host of relevant theoretical and practical questions.

So, among others, it has caused or, more precisely, it has brought back into focus two crucial and interrelated political questions: the question of state formation, change, and disintegration, which is more empirical, and the question of the withering away (or revival) of the nation-state, which is more theoretical.

75 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror

Being extremely ambiguous, the empirical evidence allows very different and even diametrically opposed answers and interpretations.

Still in power the mainstream developmentalist paradigm offers a new version of the “late-late comer” interpretation. The old underlying assumptions (universalist but western-centric outlook, singu- lar state-society as unit of analysis, unilinear and evolutionary image of time and space, and others) consequently lead to the old conclusion, that of universalism and revival of the nation-state. “Newly independent nation-states” of the former U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia would be its undeniable and final proof. The nature and the future of the West European transnational integration, however, remain here less clear.

This essay offers an alternative, world-systems interpretation of the contradictory European and Yugoslav 1992 (dis)integration. Its fundamental epistemological assumptions (a global but genuinely pluralist outlook, with the whole world as an appropriate unit of analysis, multilinear and multiply historical TimeSpace, and the others) are expressed and formulated extensively and systematically elsewhere (Wallerstein, 1991d: 237-256). Starting from these fundamentals, and analyzing the complex empirical evidence, this essay will come to the conclusion which will strongly support not revival but, on the contrary, the withering away of the nation-state, not the emergence of “newly independent nation-states”, but, on the contrary, the emergence of newly and extremely dependent state-like client-units of the newly and really emerging transnational political formation. The opening paradox will become a seeming paradox.

Any world-systems study of Yugoslav disintegration undertaken here should not be confused with a so-called case, or comparative, study. Unlike case or comparative study, world-systems study is a holistic study with a whole world as the appropriate unit of analysis. In that sense the world-systems study of Yugoslav disintegra-

76 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović tion should be undertaken as both the ideographic (historiographic) study of an unique historical process-event (Yugoslav 1992 disintegration) and the nomothetic (theoretic) study of a long-term, large-scale socio-political process (state formation, change, and disintegration in general, and withering away or revival of the nation-state in particular).

The world-systems relevancy of Yugoslavia had even been noted much before its current war and disintegration: “The Yugoslavian experiment has not yet been studied in the light of the neo-Marxist world-system perspective. This is an unfortunate lacuna” (Chase- Dunn, 1982: 17). By the war and disintegration, that relevancy has been only reaffirmed and reinforced. Yugoslavia or what used to be Yugoslavia has developed into a real and a negative world-system, semi-peripheral pattern. One can hardly imagine any other country of the world today which corresponds more and better with the following W. Martin’s conceptualization and description of the pattern: “Located at the crossroads of global accumulation networks and the interstate system, the semiperiphery reveals [...] the very limits of what is commonly called ‘progress’ or ‘development’ in the modern world. This is, moreover, a dangerous location, encapsulating and compressing as it does central contradictions of both the global division of labor and the interstate system. [...] the coalescence within the semiperiphery of such explosive forces and the clear-cut inability to defuse them portend constant upheavals not of the world-economy but endemic civil war within semiperipheral states. Arrighi’s depiction of Israel and South Africa as an archetypical semiperipheral future is but one example of this.” (Martin, 1990: 9-10)

This essay represents only the last in a series of works dealing with modern Yugoslav society, written and published in the last ten-fifteen years. The first in the series was the MA thesis dealing with contemporary Yugoslav society (Popović, 1983). Contemporary Yugoslav society has been studied there in a classic Marxist perspective: out of a concrete international and world sys-

77 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror tem. The systemic presentation and critique of the world-systems analysis, given later in a Ph.D. dissertation (Popović, 1991a), has been largely motivated by the ambition to rectify that mistake.

The next step was quite logical: the study of modern Yugoslav society, but now in a world-systems perspective. Initially, the research was conceived and entitled as “Yugoslav transformation” (Popović, 1991b); after mid 1991, when the war erupted, the title had to be modified into the “Yugoslav disintegration in a world- systems perspective” (Popović, 1992).

This paper was of a mixed, twofold character and it should be kept in mind all the time: on the one hand, the paper is a presentation of the first research findings and conclusions, on the other hand and simultaneously it is an open agenda for further investigation.

The paper is divided into two parts: the first (2.1.) entitled “From Abstract (World-Systems Concepts) To Concrete (Yugoslav Disintegration)”, and the second (2.2.) entitled “From Concrete (Yugoslav Disintegration) To Abstract (World-Systems Concepts)”. Of course, the division is only of a technical nature. Permanent exchange, interplay, and reiteration (A1C1, C1A2, A2C2, C2A3, and so on, ad infinitum) are what actually exist between the two in any real analysis of any complex system.

At the very end of this introduction, special gratitude should be expressed to all of those who have inspired, supported, or helped this research in the last several years.

The greatest thanks certainly goes to professor the late Zoran Vidaković of Belgrade University and professor Immanuel Wallerstein of the State University New York (SUNY) at Binghamton. They have generously initiated, encouraged, and supervised the most of this research. They have decisively influ- enced most of its ideas as well.

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An outline for this paper was presented at the Fernand Braudel Center (SUNY-Binghamton) on April 29, 1992. Helpful commentary and critique were received there from Giovanni Arrighi, Terence Hopkins, Georgii Derlugian, Kenneth Straus, and other scholars. Beneficial commentary and critique have also been received from professor Robin Remington at the State University of Missouri-Columbia.

Necessary financial and logistic support have been provided by two research fellowships, the British Council Fellowship (University of Sussex, Brighton, U.K., 1988-1989) and the John Marshall Fellowship (State University of Missouri-Columbia and State University of New York-Binghamton, U.S., 1991-1992). Special gratitude goes to the Fernand Braudel Center for its sincere hospitality and stimulating atmosphere provided in the last phase of the work in 1991-92.

2. Explanation: World-Systems Perspective

2.1. From Abstract (World-Systems Concepts) To Concrete (Yugoslav Disintegration)

2.1.1. Incorporation And (Semi)Peripheralization

In some respects, Yugoslavia has been a typical semiperipheral country, in some others, however, it has been and remained to its very disintegration, a unique one.

So, in G. Arrighi’s and J. Drangel’s empirical analysis of “the stratification of the world-economy” in the period 1938-1983, Yugoslavia has been found an unambiguously (block M) semiperipheral country or an “organic member of the semiperipheral zone” (Arrighi and Drangel, 1986: 65-74). Despite radical rheto-

79 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror ric, the communist regime did not change, and was not able to change, anything in this constant semiperipheral position (Arrighi, 1990a).

In the Yugoslav case, however, a common (semi-peripheral) position has covered up the numerous and enormous internal disparities of the country.

The disparities have been created in a long-term, large-scale, uneven and contradictory process of incorporation and (semi)peripheralization.

Western and eastern Yugoslav lands have been incorporated into the world-economy in different times (centuries) as well as through different patterns; the western (Slovenia and Croatia) in the so called long sixteenth century, in the first era of great expansion, and through the Habsburg empire, the eastern (Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina), however, in the second era of great expansion of the capitalist world-economy (1730-1840s), via the protracted and dramatic dissolution of the Ottoman empire (Wallerstein, 1974; Wallerstein, 1980; Wallerstein, 1989).

In a very well documented study of the European periphery and industrialization in the so called long nineteenth century (1780- 1914), these two patterns have been clearly recognized and differentiated from each other as well as both of them from the third (Scandinavian) one: “While at the beginning of ‘the long nineteenth century’ these countries appeared as a unit in virtue of their backward and traditional economic structure when compared to the core [...] by the end of the period, the similarities among them had largely ceased to exist. The Scandinavian countries had caught up, had become parts of the developed European industrial core; other countries, Italy and Hungary [as well as the Austrian part of Habsburg empire], but in part Russia, too, had started on the road to thorough going economic change without, however, traversing

80 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović it by the time the outbreak of World War I cut short the period of nineteenth century transformations. Still other countries of Southern and Southeastern Europe had hardly started on the road to change, or were bogged down at the very start. Despite their socio-political and cultural differences, they were relegated to a role very similar to that allotted to the nineteenth and twentieth century extra-European peripheries of the capitalist world-economy. [...] The Balkans could not break out of the vicious circle.” (Berend and Ranki, 1982: 159-160, 71)

The same two-three patterns have been clearly recognized and differentiated on a political level as well. In a profound historical analysis of the lineages of the absolutist states, P. Anderson has identified two-three distinct state and political types: western (Spain, France, England, Italy, and Sweden), and eastern absolutist states (Prussia, Poland, Austria, Russia, and The House of Islam); in a further, and more detailed analysis, The House of Islam has been differentiated from eastern absolutism as a separate, despotic political type: “The First World War [...] originated in the one cor- ner of Europe where Absolutism never took root. [...] it was, in fact, precisely its lack of any traditional or stable integration into the international State-system of the late 19th and early 20th century which made it the ‘powder-keg’ of Europe, that eventually detonated the conflagration of 1914. [...] The character of the Ottoman system, moreover, provides the basic explanation of why the Balkan peninsula continued after the late mediaeval crisis to evolve in a pattern altogether divergent from that of the rest of Eastern Europe, with consequences lasting well into this century. [...] What was the nature of this Asian colossus? Its contours provide a strange contrast with those of the European Absolutism that was contemporary with it. The economic bedrock of the Osmanli despotism was the virtually complete absence of private property in land. The whole arable and pastoral territory of the Empire was deemed the personal patrimony of the Sultan, with the exception of waqf religious endowments. [...] Thus throughout most of the Balkans, the local ethnic nobility was soon eliminated - a fact of

81 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror great consequence for the future social development of the region [...] the social and cultural results of the complete destruction of the native ruling classes were undoubtedly retrogressive.” (Anderson, 1974: Contents, 361, 365, 372)

Together with an acute economic crisis and postcommunist nationalist politics, this complex and heavy history was the most important factor of Yugoslav disintegration.

Common political characteristics of the semiperiphery as a whole are relatively well- known: weak and dependent state (Wallerstein, 1986: 345-346; Hopkins, 1982: 13); fragile and complicated fron- tiers (Aymard, 1985: 42, 44); “catch up” ideologies (Chalmers, 1991: 74); innovative authoritarianism (Arrighi, 1985: 276); and chronic and recurrent warfare (Martin, 1990: 9-10).

What has made the Balkans historically unique is, in fact, the highest magnitude of these common semiperipheral features: the long-lasting Ottoman-Habsburg, East-West hostility has drawn one of the deepest and most devastating “line of hatred” (Brodel, 1987) in modern history. No wonder that the last Balkan war (as well as the previous ones) has erupted and escalated exactly around that historical line.

2.1.2. Yugoslav State: Contradictory Incubation

To understand adequately Yugoslav state formation (change and disintegration) in the last two centuries, one should necessarily start from the same line as well as from the other historical factors sketched out in the preceding section (uneven and contradictory incorporation into the world-economy, prolonged and dramatic dissolution of the two old world-empires, chronic and recurrent warfare).

Yugoslavia as a state has come into existence (and collapsed) through a very complex interplay of the so-called international and

82 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović internal forces. Its trajectory “from imperial borderlands to developing nation” (Lampe and Jackson, 1982: subtitle), and vice versa, has been extremely violent and complicated.

The long-lasting, mostly violent dissolution of the two world- empires and gradual rise of diverse national-liberation movements have been, of course, only the two opposed and interwoven sides of the same historical process.

The relationship among diverse national-liberation movements has been complex and complicated in itself. As a matter of fact, this relationship has been and remains the very crux of the process. A multi-ethnic Yugoslav state has emerged (evolved and failed) out of a double, contradictory incubation. Its history has constantly been (and remained to its very end) the history of the two alternative but interrelated and overlapped projects and movements; 1) the numerous separatist ethno-nationalist movements, fighting for separate and mutually exclusive ethnic states, on the one hand, and 2) the complex and compromising Yugoslav idea and movement (Yugoslavism), aiming to build and maintaining a common Yugoslav state, on the other hand.

Dependent on the complex and changeable international and internal dynamics, the real relationship between these two projects and movements, as well as their relative strength and influence, have constantly been in a state of flux, going from unstable coalitions, via latent rivalries, to open and violent conflicts, and from relatively stronger Yugoslav to relatively stronger ethno-nationalist influences. C. and B. Jelavich have recognized this cyclical, pulsating dynamics as the main one in the course of “the establishment of the Balkan [and Yugoslav] national states, 1804-1920”. They have recognized it in almost every important project, event, or year in the long and complicated history of the Yugoslav state. Suffice here just to mention some of them: the Illyrian pro- Yugoslav movement born and developed under the impacts of the French Revolution and Napoleonic rule in the Adriatic lands, the

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Greater Serbian plan (the Načertanije of Ilija Garašanin) in 1844, the first (anti-Hungarian) Serbo-Croat coalition during turbulent and revolutionary 1848-1849, the crisis and worsening of the Serbo-Croat relations caused by the crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878, the revival and the rise of the Serbo-Croat coalition and of the Yugoslav idea and movement as a whole after 1903, and the foundation of the first Yugoslav state at the end of the First World War (Jelavich and Jelavich, 1977). The same cyclical, pulsating dynamic was the main dynamic of the newly founded Yugoslav state as well. It was the main dynamic of the so- called First (Wilsonian) Yugoslavia (1918-1941) as well as of the so-called Second (Leninist) Yugoslavia (1945-1991). Finally, the same contradictory dynamic was (and is) the underlying dynamics of both the First (1941-1945) and the Second Collapses of Yugoslavia (1991-?).

What is even more important is the fact that the Yugoslav idea (movement) alone, Yugoslavism in itself has always been an extremely contradictory and ambiguous phenomenon.

It has always had relatively different meanings and contents for different ethnic and political groups. So, there has always been an important difference between the Serbian and the Croatian Yugoslavism, the former usually fighting for more centralized, unitary state, the latter mostly fighting for a more decentralized confederative organization. Not to mention the quite specific mostly defensive Yugoslavism of the numerous smaller ethnic groups.

Generally speaking, Yugoslavism has always been much more of an instrument of competing ethnic political elites, rather than a genuine mass, grassroots movement, and it was its greatest and fatal weakness. Even when Yugoslavism has had mass support (namely, that of the communist movement in its earlier, heroic phase), that support has been mostly authoritarian and therefore fragile, not democratic and stable. This weakness explains all the

84 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović complicated but sterile political and constitutional crises in Yugoslav history.

The deepest origin of all these numerous crises as well as of the underlying lack of a genuine and mass Yugoslav citizens’ movement, however, has been one reason alone: Yugoslavia’s weak semiperipheral international and world-system position. Lack of internal economic and political integration, external dependency, authoritarian state, weak and fragile civil society: these and similar characteristics have been only the different expressions of the same structural weakness. In that sense, the ambiguity of the Yugoslav idea and movement, which has been emphasized here several times, has been and remains, above all, an objectively and structurally caused and reinforced phenomenon.

An inter-state system has a very important role in the creation of any modern state. If the state belongs to the (semi)peripheral zone of the system, that role is even greater and even more important. Yugoslavian history vividly confirms this general rule. L. S. Stavrianos’ history of The Balkans since 1453 reveals a lot of evidence of that kind: a recurrent international vacuum, the decisive influence of the great powers, the extreme dependency of the Balkan states. “The latter were at least politely heard before being ignored [in Berlin in 1878]” (Stavrianos, 1958: 410), such diplomatic treatment has been rather typical than exceptional. Publicly, of course, such treatment has been usually covered up with the rhetoric of would be equality, self-determination, and sovereignty. Secretly, however, it has been “rather cynical” than rhetoric: “In October, 1944, Churchill and Stalin held a conference in Moscow [...] The first meeting was held in the evening of October 9. Churchill has left a vivid picture of the manner in which he settled Balkan affairs with Stalin. ‘[... Referring to the famous fifty-fifty division of the interest spheres in Yugoslavia:] I pushed this across to Stalin [...] he took his blue pencil and made a large tick upon it, and passed it back to us. It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set it down.’” (Stavrianos, 1958: 818-819)

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In a world-systems perspective, however, international and internal factors, inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic dynamics, historical and actual forces, all of them have been only different aspects of the same complex reality, and this should be kept in mind all the time. The mainstream western analysts normally do quite the opposite. They usually isolate and overemphasize some of these aspects, especially the historical inter-ethnic hatred.

Historical inter-ethnic hatred is, of course, extremely important. This essay has taken it into account. Out of current and living political intra-ethnic struggles, however, historical inter-ethnic hatred (and other similar factors) could not be anything but a passive heritage. Greed for power and endless political manipulation are these living forces, which usually and normally activate them. Section 2.1.4. deals with such an activation in a post-communist Yugoslav society.

This section (2.1.2.) ends with a vivid picture which brings together and condenses the all previously mentioned factors, intra-ethnic struggles, inter-ethnic conflicts, Yugoslavism, ethnonationalism. Focussing on the mass anti-government demonstration held in Belgrade on Saturday March 9, 1991, R. Remington successfully elucidates what is probably the most important here, the political transformation of the intra-ethnic tensions into the inter-ethnic conflict: “The Road to Civil War On Saturday March 9, 1991 [...] Serbian police clashed with 80,000 demonstrators [...] Army tanks rolled into Belgrade [...] Milošević’s subsequent session with Belgrade University students revealed the depth of his growing opposition. [...] There was euphoria; an expectation that the Serbian president [Slobodan Milošević] would be forced into further democratic concessions. It is within this context that one must understand the confusing, tangled events that brought about the collapse of political dialogue into a dead and civil war. Beyond an estimated 2,500 [today, in the mid of 1992: more than 10,000] dead, there are causalities in the thousands; among them the Yugoslavia, that the JNA set out to save. [...] Notwithstanding the

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Serbian leaderships’ continued rhetoric in the name of Yugoslavia [...] Jović’s resignation in March [1991] signaled that Milošević had given up on Yugoslavia [...] and embarked on a land grab in the name of ‘Greater Serbia’ [... ] an authoritarian, dictatorial ‘Greater Serbia’ masquerading as Yugoslavia” (Remington, 1991: 18- 21, 26).

2.1.3. Yugoslav Reintegration In 1945, Its Definitive Disintegration In 1991?

After the last section, the principal factors, and forces of Yugoslav state formation, change and disintegration should be relatively transparent, clear. Nevertheless, one important problem remains unanswered.

After the Second World War and First Yugoslav Collapse (1941- 1945) Yugoslavia was reborn. After the ongoing, Second Yugoslav Collapse (1991-), however, Yugoslavia appears to be facing its definitive disintegration. (At least, there is no a single sign of some new possible reintegration.) Why?

The scale of hatred, death, and devastation does not seem to be plausible and convincing answer. That scale was not smaller during and after the First Yugoslav Collapse, and yet the country reintegrated in 1945. A plausible and convincing answer can be found only in a wider, world-systems perspective.

The double or even multiply temporality (Wallerstein, 1992) is the crux of the perspective in general and the main key for an answer here.

To “distinguish between cycles and trends” does not mean simply and only to differentiate. “Furthermore, and this is the crucial element, it is necessary to argue the specific relationship between a set of cyclical rhythms and the corresponding secular trends.” (Wallerstein, 1991d: 260-261) To differentiate and to relate at the

87 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror same time, has always been the highest wisdom and skill of world-systems analysis.

The most striking difference between the 1940s and the 1990s is twofold and cyclical: in the 1940s (or, more precisely, in the period 1945-1967), the capitalist world-economy was in the A-phase of the fourth Kondratieff, and the inter-state system (U.S. hegemony) in the phase of hegemonic maturity or true hegemony; since 1967, however, the world-economy has come into the B-phase of the Kondratieff, U.S. hegemony in its declining phase (Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1979: 498-499). This difference explains largely why Yugoslavia reintegrated in 1945, but disintegrated definitely in 1991. At the same time, this same disintegration (1991) has been one of those (recent events) which have made that important difference more visible and clearer.

“In 1989 all of the eastern European states became independent of the Soviet Union. The US-Soviet order that had organized interstate relations in Europe after World War II was over” (Halliday 1990a: 8). “No other order or scheme as cohesive as the Cold War division of Europe had been substituted in its place.” (Sudler, 1992: 23) This interregnum has been already misinterpreted and misnamed as the so-called New World Order. The very reality, however, has uncovered the truth very soon. One recent article, dealing with Yugoslav crisis, has brought an excellent picture of that truth as well as of the newly emerged “sense of helplessness” and frustration pervading the U.S. and global elites: “Failure of the New Order. Yugoslav Carnage Poses Painful Questions For Western Alliance and United Nations. With the outside world in effect relegated to the role of bystander during the violent dis- memberment of Bosnia and Herzegovina, painful questions are being asked about how the combined efforts of Western Europe, the United States and the United Nations failed a crucial test of post-cold-war security. Could the carnage in Yugoslavia have been prevented? Can it be stopped? Will it happen elsewhere? [...] What Can Be Done? A sense of helplessness is pervasive. Even those

88 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović who are most critical of the Bush Administration’ s handling of the crisis say it is difficult to recommend any new course of action that would have a mitigating effect in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The United Nations is overstretched. European security organizations have no mechanisms for this kind of crisis. [...] Analysts are wondering what part of Eurasia will erupt next. [...] In [U.S.] Congress, there is virtually no demand for action. ‘No one really has any good ideas, ‘ a Congressional aide said, explaining why hearings are not being held on Yugoslavia.” (Crossette, 1992: Al, A12)

The Soviet or the so called communist system has been earlier defined by world-systems analysts as an integral part of the capitalist world-economy and U.S. hegemony: “Although many com- mentators have been hailing 1989 as the beginning of the Pax Americana, the thesis of this book [Geopolitics and geoculture] is that, quite the contrary, it marks the end of the Pax Americana. [...] The USSR was in effect the subimperial power of the US for eastern Europe, and a quite efficient one at that.” (Wallerstein, 1991b: 2, 7. Similarly: Wallerstein, 1990: 6-7; and: Arrighi, 1990a: 2.) Only a year or two ago, such statement could have seemed almost bizarre. Today, however, in the light of the most recent development, especially in the light of above-mentioned failure of the so-called New World Order, it has become quite realistic and almost notorious.

Here we will introduce one new element. As it has been already indicated, the ongoing cyclical (particularly hegemonic) decline is not acting alone, but together with a set of corresponding secular trends. Currently, these secular trends also have a declining tendency. They express the ongoing crisis and exhaustion of the modern world-system. More about them comes in section 2.2.1. What is relevant here, however, is a simple fact that they additionally favored Yugoslav disintegration in 1991. This disintegration has been induced by the exhaustion of all modernizing energies, not solely by the collapse of so called communism. It should not be

89 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror forgotten: it was not only the collapse of so called communism in 1989, but also the election failure of the last Yugoslav Prime Minister A. Marković’s liberal and social-democratic reform program in 1990, which was a prelude to Yugoslav war and disintegration in 1991.

Finally, there are some signs, which indicate that the very war in Yugoslavia has been or could be or become a specific, post-cold- war, new war pattern. “With the war in Yugoslavia [...] Europe witnessed the most destructive [...] conflagration since World War II. [...] centrifugal tendencies (ethnic conflict and so forth) reemerge with the decline of the cold war. The Yugoslavia scenario may be the wave of the future.” (Reifer, 1992a: 11-12)

Two of the most striking characteristics of this new war pattern are: 1) conventional form, and 2) (semi)peripheral site. A shift “from geopolitics to technopolitics” after the advent of nuclear weapons (McLauchlan, 1989: 91) has been the most significant intermediary there. The main effect of the shift as well as the subsequent new type of war have been prophetically described by C. Chase-Dunn and K. O’Reilly in their article about the core wars of the future: “While the destructiveness of nuclear weapons has reduced the probability of core wars, it has driven conflicts among core powers to be fought out in peripheral areas with conventional weapons” (Chase-Dunn and O’Reilly, 1989: 57).

In some innovative and perverted way, it seems like the Delta or the Third World War has been and is going to be successfully transformed into a host of decentralized and conventional peripheral wars. To avoid any possible confusion, it should be added that the above-mentioned transformation, dislocation does not necessarily and primarily imply any deliberate policy or conspiracy. On the contrary, it usually implies it is a spontaneous and multi-mediated, especially economically mediated process of adaptation. In any case, this new process and pattern of war has the greatest importance in understanding the real nature of the newly emerging

90 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović post-communist nationalist regimes.

2.1.4. On the Real Nature Of The Post-Communist Nationalist Regimes

Social sciences should be able to distinguish reality and facts from rhetoric and proclamations. “Everywhere, the reality has been that the fact that a movement proclaims the unlinking of a state’s productive processes from the integrated world-economy has never in fact accomplished the unlinking. It may have accomplished temporary withdrawal which, by strengthening internal production and political structures, enabled the state to improve its relative position in the world-economy.” (Wallerstein, 1980: 176) The most recent collapse as well as the ongoing reintegration of the former so-called communist states into the world-economy has strongly reaffirmed the validity of this general theoretical statement.

Yugoslav experience has been especially interesting and intriguing here. Retrospectively and quite generally speaking, that experience could be summarized as a succession of three relatively distinct but interrelated phases: 1) the initial, abrupt and painful withdrawal in the 1940s, 2) the gradual, partial and indirect (state and party-controlled) reintegration in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and 3) the direct, dramatic, and painful reintegration in the 1990s.

Newly emerged post-communist regimes (phase 3) are deeply rooted in the preceding communist politics (especially phase 2). This is the truth in general as well as in particular, regarding ethnicity, the main source of political legitimacy and manipulation of the regimes.

It is absolutely true that the cold war and communism (in its earlier phase 1) have succeeded in freezing and containing the old inter-ethnic hatred and traumatic past. It is also true, however, that the same communist system in its latter phase (2) has prepared and even institutionalized the principal elements of the coming

91 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror post-communist extreme ethno-nationalist regimes. That is the main finding and conclusion in an excellent recent article as well: “The Yugoslav crisis has its structural roots in the communist nationality policy. This policy [...] generated [...] the institutionalization of ‘ethnic power’ in the republics” (Vujačić and Zaslavsky, 1991: 131).

This institutionalization has certainly been the most important element of continuity between the communist and post-communist politics. Discontinuity between these two politics, on the other hand, has nothing to do with ethnicity by itself. Namely, the discontinuity has come from relatively changed and new “double temporality”. The twofold, cyclical and secular decline, which has been indicated, has made “the demands [...] of ethnicity [...] stronger” (Arrighi, Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1989: 114). “Since people no longer believe that the omnipotent individual is indeed the subject of history, they have been searching for the protection of groups” (Wallerstein, 1991: 56; Similarly: Wallerstein, 1991c: 20). This search for protection from below, however, and it will be a decisive factor here, has been accompanied with not less dramatic search for legitimacy from above. Together, these two have created what is today known as the post-communist ethno-nationalist “explosions [and implosions] in all directions” (Wallerstein, 1991:56).

In Yugoslavia these explosions and implosions have already scat- tered out a host of old, well-known fascist-like phenomena: extreme and exclusive ethnocentrism, systematic nationalism and racism, charismatic and pathological personalities, inter-ethnic hatred and war, war crimes and crimes against humanity, the most brutal atrocities against the civilian population, so called ethnic cleansing of the disputed territories, and so forth. Before entering the discussion about the real and possible meaning of these phenomena, the two short additional remarks will be pointed out here. Firstly, despite antagonistic rhetoric, warring sides and regimes in (former) Yugoslavia are of the same or at least of the very similar

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(nationalist) kind: both S. Milošević’s so-called “socialist” and F. Tuđman’s so-called “democratic” government have been found politically responsible for the war and above-mentioned crimes by relatively neutral and objective international human rights organizations. Secondly, the above-mentioned and similar phenomena should not be considered merely acute and transitory ones: they have just come into being through the deepest historical, social and political dynamics of the regimes, therefore it is highly unrealistic to expect their quick and easy retreat.

Some Yugoslav analysts have already labelled these regimes as fascist or at least semi-fascist ones. R. Močnik from Ljubljana (Slovenia) has certainly been one of the first who has used such a name. A whole year before the war began, in one discussion about the real nature of these regimes, he had picturesquely labeled them as the regimes of “low-tension fascism”, “low” emphasizing its relative lack of power if compared with old Italian and German Fascism (Močnik, 1990). Similar identification was adopted in an earlier version of this paper. Peripheral (Southeast European, Balkan, weak, dependent, diffused) Fascism/Nazism of the Second Generation has been the definition there. After a more careful and prolonged consideration, however, the fascist label was dropped being found improper and potentially misleading.

Although fascist-like, these regimes are not and can not be or become fascist, primarily because of their (semi)peripheral, highly dependent status in the world-economy. Italian and German fascist regimes, as it is very well-known, were ultimately central ones, and the war between them and other core powers had been a typical core conflict. Besides, actual post-communist regimes are still in a relatively unfinished and extremely ambiguous process. What will finally come into being from the process mostly depend not on their own but on certain central dynamics. The very term “post-communism” (defining newly emerging regimes only in a negative way, saying what they have ceased to be, but not positively, what they have become or what they may

93 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror become) clearly indicates how really ambiguous and uncertain that process is.

These just-mentioned characteristics of the regimes, particularly their high dependency, imperfectness and ambiguity, as well as the regimes as a whole have been most successfully predicted, condensed and explained by G. Arrighi’s definition “extreme ethnonationalist democratic regimes”. This definition (description) deserves to be quoted in extenso: “At the moment [1990, a year before Yugoslav war broke out], the dominant trend seems to be a propagation to the entire semiperiphery of the prosystemic and stable parliamentary regimes that have been the norm in the organic core since World War II. [...] This trend is an expression of the general crisis of coercive rule in the semiperiphery that [...] has deep structural roots and therefore can be expected to continue into the foreseeable future. Yet, this trend is more an expression of the crisis than a solution of the crisis. The eventual outcome of the crisis remains unclear. [...] A new and enlarged Marshall Plan would be required for most of the semiperiphery to be included. However, core states seem neither willing nor capable of such an understanding. [...] For all these reasons, it is highly unlikely that the post-Franco experience of Spain will be replicated by many other semiperipheral states of comparable size. [...] Worse still, for each new Spain and a few more Argentinas, the current trend toward prosystemic parliamentary democracy in the semiperiphery may generate many South Africas and Israels. [...] it is quite possible that the ongoing crisis of the prosystemic and antisystemic authoritarian regimes of the semiperiphery will become a breeding ground of new varieties of extreme ethnonationalist democratic regimes, more or less parliamentary and more or less prosystemic according to circumstances. Unable either to satisfy or to repress popular demands for livelihood and democracy, an increasing number of regimes of the semiperiphery may be tempted to seek a way out of this political impasse by satisfying these demands selectively on the basis of racial, ethnic, and religious discrimina- tions [...] human hatred and suffering may escalate beyond what is

94 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović in anyone’s power to control.” (Arrighi, 1990: 32-35)

The colors of the political spectrum are still unclear and blurred. In former Yugoslavia as well as in some parts of the former USSR and Eastern Europe, however, the darker tones clearly prevail. The evolution from red to blue or green, from communism to liberalism or ecologism, had been a hope. The change from red to brown, from authoritarian communism to aggressive nationalism, unfortunately, has come into reality. Will it remain only a local or regional affair, it mostly depends on the dynamics, which is going on in the center of the system: “What kind of world-system will emerge out of this turmoil is hard to say. On the one hand, the escalation of racial, ethnic, and religious animosities in the semiperiphery may link up with and enhance similar trends in the core and periphery. Left unchecked, this tendency may well plunge the world into a situation of systemic chaos worse than that of the first half of the twentieth century. On the other hand, the attempts and struggles to contain and counteract this escalation may create in the semiperiphery new forms of popular democracy capable of laying the foundations of a less exploitative and exclusionary world-system.” (Arrighi, 1990: 35)

2.2. From Concrete (Yugoslav Disintegration) To Abstract (World- Systems Concepts)

2.2.1. Starting And Guiding Ideas

The list of starting and guiding ideas, which follow, is neither systematic nor complete. Most of the ideas in the list are only indicated, not elaborated. Nevertheless, it should serve the purpose.

The main purpose of the list is, as the title of this section says, to start and guide the analysis that proceeds. That function will be sometimes explicit and obvious and sometimes only implicit and implied. In both cases, however, it will be decisive and selective.

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In a sense, the very selection (of the ideas) represents a certain test of (their) relevance. In that sense, this list is not less a result of previous studies than a start for further analyses. In both cases, however, it has been a part of the same intellectual process, a jour- ney from concrete (Yugoslav disintegration) to abstract (world- systems ideas). The concrete experience (Yugoslav disintegration) has been the main criterion for both past tests and further developments.

1) Major Contradiction, Dynamics, and Dialectics Of The Modern World-System.

Four general ideas have been found here most adequate and helpful: K. Marx’s Capital-Labor relation, S. Freud’s Life-Death or Civilization-Nature contention, K. Polanyi’s Market-Society confrontation, and I. Wallerstein’s System-Antisystem dialectics. Given concrete Yugoslav experience, however, the negative side of the dialectics has been found especially and (for some) surprisingly relevant and important.

The biology of power could probably be the shortest way of describing and explaining the essence of its side of the dialectic. No wonder some of the most relevant ideas in modern social sciences are of a fairly biological foundation. So, “the greed for surplus-labour”, or, even more picturesquely, “the were-wolf’s hunger for surplus-labour” is a driving force in K. Marx’s explanation of “the ceaseless accumulation of capital” (Marx, 1909: 259, 268). “The animal kingdom, from which men have no business to exclude themselves” is such a force in S. Freud’s psychological theory (Freud, 1986c: 204), whereas that theory alone, particularly its “fear as destruction” is a key to F. Neumann’s “psychological process of dictatorship” (Neumann, 1990: 137).

“The diabolic forces” are a key to M. Weber’s “politics as a vocation” (Weber, 1965: 52), and, even more explicitly, some kind of “a biological necessity of society” is a quintessence in F. Braudel

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‘s history: “The conclusion to be borne in mind for the present is that the power apparatus, the might that pervades and permeates every structure, is something more than the state. It is the sum of the political, social, economic and cultural hierarchies, a collection of means of coercion where the state’s presence is always felt, where it is often the keystone of the whole, but where it is seldom if ever solely in control. It may even be eclipsed, or destroyed; but it always reconstitutes itself, unfailingly, as if it were somehow a biological necessity of society.” (Braudel, 1982: 554-555)

A Braudelian, biological image of power has been strongly confirmed by two recent empirical researches as well. Stable and persistent “hierarchy of wealth”, “world income inequalities”, “organic members” of the core, periphery and semiperiphery, have been the main findings of G. Arrighi and J. Drangel’s exploration of “the stratification of the world-economy” in the period 1938-1983 (Arrighi and Drangel, 1986; Arrighi, 1990; Arrighi, 1990a). Quite similar are recent findings in I. Prigogine and I. Stengers’ experimental “new science” which support some classics’ hypotheses about the nature of life in general: “The idea that chemical activity cannot be reduced to mechanical trajectories, to the calm domination of dynamic laws, has been emphasized from the beginning. We could cite Diderot at length. Later, Nietzsche, in a different context, asserted that it was ridiculous to speak of ‘chemical laws’, as though chemical bodies were governed by laws similar to moral laws. In chemistry, he protested, there is no constraint, and each body does as it pleases. It is not a matter of ‘respect’ but of a power struggle, of the ruthless domination of the weaker by the stronger. [...] Here another interesting question arises: in the world around us, some basic simple symmetries seem to be broken. Everybody has observed that shells often have a preferential chirality. Pasteur went so far as to see in dissymmetry, in the breaking of symmetry, the very characteristic of life.” (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984: 136, 163)

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The above-indicated biology of power, power struggle and dissymmetry of life as a whole are most clearly depicted in one L. Stavrianos’ historiographic picture: “[Chapter 3. Coming of the Ottoman Turks] These military developments converted the nascent Ottoman state into a powerful engine for war. Orkhan was now ready for expansion, and his line of advance was already foreshadowed. [...] Not only was the Balkan Peninsula open to invasion, but the whole of Christendom in the fourteenth century was weakened and divided to an unprecedented degree. [...] The following sequence of events suggests some relationship between social fragility in Christendom and Ottoman success in Southeastern Europe: 1354, first Turkish settlement on the Gallipoli Peninsula; 1358, Jacqueria in France; 1381, Peasant Revolt in England; 1389, Serbian defeat at Kosovo; 1514, Peasant Revolt in Hungary; 1523, Peasant Revolt in Germany; 1526, Hungarian defeat at Mohacs; 1529, Turks besiege Vienna. [...] We may conclude that the entire Balkan Peninsula on the eve of the Turkish invasion was socially as well as politically ripe for con- quest.” (Stavrianos, 1958: 39-41)

2) Time Of Troubles: Crisis, Disorder, and Disintegration Of The Modern-World-System.

Positively speaking, “we are living in a transformational TimeSpace coming at the end of the long structural TimeSpace of the modern world-system.” (Wallerstein, 1992: 36) Negatively speaking, however, we are living in a TimeSpace of troubles: crisis, disorder, and disintegration of the system.

More precisely, in 1973-1974 began a long and threefold down- ward tendency: the ongoing secular crisis of the system was accompanied and strengthened with the B-phase of the fourth Kondratieff as well as with the declining phase of current logistics and hegemonic cycle (Braudel, l987a: 108-127).

“A systemic crisis may be described as a situation in which the

98 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović system has reached a bifurcation point, or the first of successive bifurcation points. [...] We seem to be in the midst of a process of cascading bifurcations that may last some 50 more years. [...] We are thus moving into a time of massive local, regional, and world disorders, a time of troubles, which will be far less structured (and therefore far less contained) than the German-U.S. wars of the twentieth century and the wars of national liberation that come in their wake.” (Wallerstein, 1991: 51-52, 56. Similarly: Wallerstein, 1991e: 18; Wallerstein: 7.)

“The edge of time” has become a legitimate topic (Falk, 1992), the notion of “chaos” exponential entry: “the total number of entries in the Perumterm Index of the Science Citation Index has shown flat, linear growth since the 1960s, whereas entries under the rubric ‘chaos’ have multiplied exponentially” (Lee, 1992: 12). “New science”, the science of thermodynamics, complexity and irreversibility, of nonlinear and nonequilibrium systems, has come into being (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984).

What kind of new order will emerge out of the current chaos? “Where shall we come out? For out of chaos comes new order. We cannot know, except for one thing. Capitalist civilization will be over [...] The most we can say beyond that is to outline a few alternative possible historical trajectories [...] without the institutional detail that is entirely unforeseeable. Three types of social formulae seem plausible in the light of the history of the world- system. One is a sort of neofeudalism [...] a world of parcellized sovereignties, of considerably more autarkic regions, of local hierarchies. [...] A second formula might be a sort of democratic fascism. Such a formula would involve a caste-like division of the world into two strata, the top one incorporating perhaps a fifth of the world’s population. [...] A third formula might be a still more radical worldwide highly decentralized, highly egalitarian world order.” (Wallerstein, 1991: 59-61) If the concrete Yugoslav experience (war, disintegration, fragmentation) is considered to be an advanced and paradigmatical case, then the first, neofeudal social

99 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror formula seems to be the most plausible and realistic of the three: Yugoslavia has literally exploded into a host of “parcellized sovereignties”, “autarkic regions” and “local hierarchies”. The final and worldwide outcome, of course, still remains to be seen.

3) Nation-State: Revival Or Withering Away?

“In the sea-change altering the movements’ settings, one shaping current stands out - historically, theoretically, strategically. That is the declining significance of the world-economy’s states, in their sovereign separateness, as key organizing centers of the historical system’s patterns of development.” (Arrighi, Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1991: 15; Similarly: Arrighi, Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1991a: 14) “The declining significance of the world- economy’s states” has been confirmed by the most recent empirical researches as well (Derlugian, 1991; Araghi, 1992).

C. Tilly, on the other hand, has noticed and generalized the same trend in a somewhat different but quite original way: “In general, the more recent a state’s creation, the more likely that other states fixed and guaranteed its external boundaries and played a direct part in the designations of its rulers and the less likely that those rulers faced well-organized internal rivals other than their own military forces. “ (Tilly, 1985: 83-85). Will one continue to call these “client-states” as states, it may be a matter of convention. Essential change, weakening or withering away of the state, however, must not be missed.

Of course, withering away of the nation-state is only a negative aspect of that change. Its positive aspect is a gradual but steady process of “world-government formation”: “Fifteen years ago [...] Wallerstein’s advice to work towards the creation of a socialist world government sounded fanciful or worse. While the very notion of a world government seemed wholly unrealistic, the notion of a socialist world government had been completely discredited by the practices of the various Socialist Internationals,

100 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović which had either failed in their purposes or had turned into instru- ments of domination of the weak by the powerful. [...] Today, the notion of a world government seems less fanciful than fifteen years ago. The Group of Seven has been meeting regularly and has come to look more and more like a committee for managing the common affairs of the world bourgeoisie. In the 1980s, the IMF and the World Bank have acted increasingly like a world ministry of finance. Last but not least, the 1990s have been inau- gurated by the refurbishing of the UN Security Council as a world ministry of police. In totally unplanned fashion, a structure of world government is being put in place bit by bit under the pressure of events by the great economic and political powers itself. To be sure, the whole process of world-government formation has been sponsored and controlled by conservative forces” (Arrighi, 1990a: 42-43).

Finally, one should not confuse here 1) the emergence of the “newly independent nation-states” (particularly from the former USSR and Yugoslavia, possibly from some new disintegrating multiethnic state), moreover an absolute increase in their number, with 2) the would-be revival of the nation-state in general. The first can go and actually goes together with the weakening or withering away, not with the revival of the state as a regulatory social mechanism and institution. That is only a reason more to conclude that the “newly independent nation-states” or new “client-states” are rather the extremely dependent parts and parcels of the really and newly emerging global political formation, than the states in the strict sense of that word.

2.2.2. Theoretical Ramification: Yugoslav Disintegration, European Bifurcation

I. Prigogine’ s theoretical and experimental work in thermodynamics can be hardly overestimated. A whole new, amazing world of nonlinear processes and phenomena, which clearly distinguish complex (chemical, biological, and social) from classical physical

101 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror systems, has been brought to light by this work: “autocatalysis process”, “chemical clock”, “‘informed’ molecules”, “active matter”, “arrow of time”, “evolutionary paradigm”, “self-organization and adaptation”, “far-from-equilibrium states”, “cascading bifurcations”, “order through fluctuations” (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984), to mention just some of them.

“The sensitivity of far-from-equilibrium states to external fluctuations” (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984: 165) is extremely important here. “‘Order through fluctuations’ models introduce an unstable world where small causes can have large effects”. This unstable world, however, “is not arbitrary. On the contrary, the reasons for the amplification of a small event are a legitimate matter for rational inquiry. Fluctuations do not cause the transformation of a system’s activity.” (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984: 206) A system alone must previously be ready or ripe for transformation.

This is exactly the framework in which the relationship between Yugoslav disintegration and European and world-system bifurcation becomes clear.

The Europe and world-system have been ready or ripe for change. In I. Prigogine’s words, they have already come into the far-from- equilibrium state.

In the equilibrium or close-to-equilibrium state of international technopolitics/geopolitics (1945-1989), Yugoslavia was of no or of little importance. In the far-from-equilibrium state, however, Yugo- slavia, or, more precisely, Yugoslavian disintegration has become disproportionately relevant, important. It has become one of those “small events [which] can [and which already] have large effects”.

In that respect, Yugoslav (1991-1992) disintegration has been here not a mere local or regional affair, but, on the contrary a point or moment of ongoing European (and world-system) bifurcation. That is the most important, crucial finding of this research and the

102 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović central thesis of this paper. The two (or maybe one but Janus-faced) ongoing, bifurcating Europes could be called: 1) an Euro-archy, which continues the Europe of hierarchy, exploitation, and domination, and 2) an Euro- (e)mancipation, which continues the Europe of social and political struggles and emancipation (Popović, 1990a: 426). J. Galtung has named these two Europes “Europe hard” and “Europe soft” (Galtung, 1989: 11).

These two Europes are both objective trends and subjective projects. In J. Galtung’s words, the most important project here is “a project of systemic efforts to strengthen the soft Europe and to weaken the hard Europe”, and further, referring to European Community and to other newly emerging European configura- tions: “I do not think the answer lies in trying to stop integrative process in which the European Community is involved [...] The answer must be to develop the other Europes, the alternatives, as strongly as possible. The EC 12 [European Community], contradiction-free, should be submerged in a contradictory ocean [...] Alternative actors have already been spelled out. They are CSCE [The Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe], E 29 [The Europe of 29 Countries, including former East European countries] [Plus: The Europe of Local Governments, The Europe of the Peoples, The Nordic Project, The Central Europe Project, and The Eastern European Project] My basic thesis is that no effort to dominate Europe from any self-appointed center will succeed in the longer run [...] General rule: The stronger the penetra- tion, after some time, the stronger the resistance. Contradictions lead to dialectics. History moves in waves and counterwaves. And so does European history. Charlemagne, Charles Quint, Napoleon, and Hitler - and the NATO-WTO system - tried to freeze European history into some design. They failed. So will their suc- cessors.” (Galtung, 1989: 13, 36, 20-21)

European alliance and defense systems, too, are in transformation. J. Galtung’s analytical and prognostic survey of the systems seems

103 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror to be quite actual and alive: “Thus there seem to be four positions on the alliance issue in the West, meaning on NATO: la. Status quo, meaning an U. S.-dominated NATO [...] 1b. U.S.-Western Europe partnership, two pillars NATO [...] 1c. An egalitarian NATO with a clearly defensive military doctrine [...] 1d. Dissolution of the alliances, neutral status all over. [...] Then there is the parallel discussion of the defense issue, also with four major positions: 2a. Status quo, including the possibility of first use of weapons of mass destruction, and more particularly of nuclear arms [...] 2b. Conventional, offensive arms [...] 2c. Transarmament to defensive, nonprovocative arms, and a new military doctrine [...] 2d. Disarmament down to nonmilitary/social defense. [...] Let us now try to combine these two efforts to outline major positions in the current struggle for a New European Peace Order. In principle, there are 16 combinations. But four combinations seem right now to cover the discussion space relatively well: la+2a: The conservative (‘Blue’) option [...] Their support of the past is unfailing. And they may not discover how alone they are before it is too late, and the option is ‘brown’ only. lb+2b: The neo-conservative (‘Light-Blue’) option. This is the combination for the intelligent conservatives who understand that something has to be done [...] 1c+2c: The social democratic/liberal (‘Light Red/Light Green’) option [...] 1d+2d: The pacifist (‘Green’) option. This is the long- term goal [...] An immediate move toward dissolution of alliances and total military disarmament is not in the cards.” (Galtung, 1989: 151-154)

What is currently “in the cards” is a struggle between “lb+2b: the neo-conservative (‘Light-Blue’)” and “lc+2c: the social democratic/liberal (‘Light Red/Light Green’ )” option. This struggle is still unfinished. Nevertheless, it seems as the neo-conservative (“light- blue”) alliance and defense system (option) has a better chance finally to prevail. What is for sure is that the war in Yugoslavia (together with the Gulf war) has served as an important point or moment of this alliance and defense systems’ bifurcation.

104 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović

Metaphorically, Yugoslav bloodshed has served here as a “shark- bait” of the neo-conservative (“light-blue”) and ultra-conservative (“brown”) option.

The alliance and defense systems are bifurcating on a world level as well. This bifurcation has been recently noticed and extrapolat- ed by T. Reifer: “The emergence of a tripolar economic order and unipolar military order [in the post-cold-war era] poses grave threats to world security. [...] There have been two responses to these threats. One response has been to send U.N. [peacekeeping] forces and agencies to deal with security issues. [...] The other response to new security threats has come from the United States, which has resisted top great a role for the U.N. [...] A recent Pentagon document calls for the maintenance of a one-superpower world [The New York Times, March 8, 1992] [...] In this study, the U.N. is largely ignored. [...] None can be sure which strategy shall emerge as the dominant trend, none can say; but it will most likely be a combination of U.N. peacekeeping forces and unilateral power projection by the United States.” (Reifer, 1992a: 23-25)

3. Instead of Conclusion: An Open Agenda

Historically, the above-mentioned Euroarchy can be considered a concrete political tendency, complex continental, international and transnational configuration, and nascent and global political formation. Theoretically, it can be considered a concrete form of the retrogressive, neofeudal withering away of the nation-state. Its progressive counter-tendency (Euroemancipation), however, has been only slightly indicated.

Such a pessimistic rather than “objective” picture has been mostly an expression of a quite specific and traumatic experience, that of the Yugoslav (1991-1992) war and disintegration. That picture is based on a new, revised understanding of the so-called “objective

105 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror reality”. “This implies a departure from the classical notion of objectivity, since in the classical view the only ‘objective’ description is the complete description of the system as it is, independent of the choice of how it is observed. Bohr always emphasized the novelty of the positive choice introduced through measurement. The physicist [not to speak about the sociologist] has to choose his language [...] Bohr expressed this idea through the principle of complementarity [...] Various possible languages and points of view about the system may be complementary. They all deal with the same reality, but it is impossible to reduce them to one simple description. The irreducible plurality of perspectives on the same reality expresses the impossibility of a divine point of view from which the whole of reality is visible.” (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984: 225)

The complementarity and plurality of the perspectives is equally or probably even more important in the social sciences: “Knowledge is generated through direct interaction with the cultural matrix; that is, based on situated praxis [...] There is no neutral or innocent knowledge [...] Honest admission of the situationally, temporally relative, and politically positional nature of our knowledge is the beginning of its further extension into wisdom. [...] The very complexity of the wave phenomena [...] precludes in principle any global understanding of dynamic historical processes, but does not preclude probabilistic uncertain [... ] and complementary understandings [...] There are many dialectics, many conflicting processes operating in the same sociohistorical field. Its knowledge is therefore perspectival, situationally relative, and complementary to other like group processes and their problemat- ics.” (Peritore, 1991: 19, 21, 23)

The “transformational TimeSpace” in which we live today (Wallerstein, 1992: 35-36), on the other hand, additionally sup- ports the probabilism and uncertainty as well as the complementarity and plurality of these different perspectives.

106 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović

Due to all these reasons, the last section of this paper will be rather suggestive than conclusive, rather an open agenda indicating several phenomena for further analysis than a closed list of some would-be absolute and undeniable truths.

Overlapping, confusing, and conflicting authorities (disintegrating Yugoslavia, newly emerging “nation-states”, mediating European Community, peacekeeping United Nations) are certainly such phenomenon. Quite apart from its important theoretical consequences (withering away or revival of the nation state), this phenomenon has also been and will probably remain empirically provocative and stimulating.

Overlapping, confusing, and conflicting TimesSpaces (East European cyclical “revival”, West European secular withering away of the nation-state) is the next such phenomenon. This overlap, confusion, conflict has surely been the main source of the ongoing East European and Balkan ethnonationalist mass illusion and elite manipulation.

Further, there is one important phenomenon-analogy. H. Jacoby has lucidly described how the modern nation-state had been coming into being from the disintegrating pre-modern, feudal domains through the late medieval times (Jacoby, 1985: 25, 29). Today we can describe how the post-modern global political formation has been coming into being from the disintegrating modern nation- state. Transformation through incorporation (Frank, 1978: 250- 251) has been the crux of the matter in both cases. Due to that change, state-like “newly emerging independent nation-states” have ceased to be real states.

Finally, the very rhetoric of the “independence and sovereignty” (of these would-be nation-states) is also one interesting and puz- zling phenomenon. In a world-system perspective, however, this phenomenon, too, becomes transparent and clear. The rhetoric of the “independence and sovereignty” has been being, in fact, an

107 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror

“organizing myth” or, to be more precise, a socio-historic narcotic, panacea used in the process of a heavy and painful reincorporation into the capitalist world-economy.

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114 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović n.a. (1991c). “The United Nations and the Future: General Introduction,” in R. A. Falk, S. S. Kim and S. H. Mendlovitz, Editors, The United Nations and a Just World Order. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 497-499. n.a. (1992). “Vance Faults Recognition,” The New York Times, April 10.

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120 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović After the Collapse January 1998

1. Introduction: The Subject, the Framework, and the Premises

After some initial hesitation, the Third Balkan War (1991-95) and the subsequent political and security crisis eventually attracted a full analytical and political attention. A full analytical and political consensus about the matter, however, has not yet been reached.

A relatively strong analytical consensus has been built around the fact of the growing international importance of the crisis: a heavy frustration caused by the “failure of the new order” to stop the war in the Balkans has been a negative and pessimistic expression of the consensus (Crossette, 1992: A1, A12). At the same time, a hope that the process of solving the crisis could induce and accelerate “the search for novel political and security arrangements in the region” and in the whole Post-Cold War world, has been the more affirmative and optimistic form of this consensus (Bugajski, 1993: 125).

Not even a minimal analytical consensus, however, has been built around the issue of the real meaning or the most appropriate interpretation of the above-mentioned fact. For most of the mainstream analysts, the Balkan war was international only in its consequences, while merely endemic, local, and transitory in its roots and dynamics. For most alternative analysts, particularly the world-systems analysts, the war was international in all its dimensions.

This paper proceeds from the basic premises of world-systems analysis, and especially from its specific TimeSpace interpretation of the post-Cold War reality (Wallerstein, 1992).

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The main working hypothesis of the paper is the idea, or hypothesis, that the post-Cold War disintegration of SFR Yugoslavia was not merely an endemic, local and transitory affair, but part of a wider world-systemic tendency. Accordingly, the earlier mentioned “failure of the new order” (to stop the war in the Balkans) was not accidental, but part of the overall secular exhaustion of the modern world-system.

This hypothesis is drawn directly from I. Prigogine’s “new science,” which is one of the most recent theoretical sources of the world-systems analysis. More specifically, it is drawn from I. Prigogine’s illuminating insight into the nonlinear nature and high sensitivity of the “far-from-equilibrium state” of the modern world-system. In such a state, even the smallest inputs (fluctuations) may grow and produce the largest outputs (changes) in the overall system (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984: 165-166, 313).

I believe that the ongoing Balkan crisis can be perceived and interpreted as just such a small, but potentially critical input (fluc- tuation). Methodologically speaking, the Balkan crisis could be seen and used as the “new science’s” privileged epistemological domain.

Instead of a full elaboration of the new science’s and world-systems analysis’ new epistemology, for which sufficient space could hardly be found here, what follows is a condensed overview of their six key epistemological principles, as well as four short epistemological comments.

The six key epistemological principles could be expressed in the following brief and antithetic way (new epistemology versus old epistemology): 1) Chaos (as opposed to a system), being the main subject of analysis; 2) World-System (as opposed to a Nation-State), being the main unit of analysis; 3) Trans-disciplinarity (as opposed to mono-disciplinarity) representing a newly emerging pattern of internal division and organization of labour

122 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović in social sciences; 4) Probabilism (neither determinism nor inde- terminism), being the main logic of social processes and inquiries; 5) Intersubjectivity (neither pre-modern subjectivity, nor modern false objectivity) representing a postmodern reconstructed model of the classical subject-object relationship, and 6) Nonlinearity and multilinearity (as opposed to unilinearity and progress), being the key to rational comprehension of the world- system.

Four short and (for our further analysis) determining and directing epistemological comments, could be formulated in the following way:

1) On the demonic disease of power: “He who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with diabolical powers” (Weber, 1965: 49). Power history is nothing but a history of international crime and mass slaughter (Popper, 1993: 324). “War making and state making (is) organized crime.” (Tilly, 1985) These notes seem directly applicable to the terrible scenario that presented the Balkan crisis to the world. The demonic disease of power appears to have been one of the dominant “diseases of the mind” that consumed the national and political elites in the former Yugoslavia. It could be argued that the “disease of power” was one of the main causes of the Balkan carnage that constituted a large part of the crisis.

2) On the post-Westphalian evolution of the world: “The world order after the Cold War (includes a) rapid growth in transnational communications, migration and economic interdependence, which is accelerating the erosion of that classical (Westphalian) conception (of the sovereignty of states) [...] International institutions are gradually evolving in just such a post-Westphalian direction” (Nye, 1992: 89, 91). The analytical shift from the “nation-state” to a “world-system” is just an epistemological consequence of this post-Westphalian evolution. The social and political realms are complex pluralities of different (local, national, international) lev-

123 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror els and forms of organization and, consequently, any rigid separa- tion between these levels and forms would be highly artificial and wrong. One could hardly imagine any better illustration of this post-Westphalian complexity and plurality than the Balkan drama with its numerous and overlapping local, national, and international projects, processes, and actors.

3) On the double and contradictory dynamics of national and international society (domination versus emancipation). This dual- ism (contradiction) pervades the entire social life. The same dual- ism (contradiction) pervades the ongoing European integration and it most directly affects Balkan affairs. As J. Galtung explicitly states, there are at least two Europes: “There is Europe hard (Europe of domination), and there is Europe soft (Europe of emancipation)” (Galtung, 1989: 6). Needless to say, one could hardly understand anything in the Balkans without the conception of these two Europes. To return to our previous comment, the domination-emancipation contradiction carries and shapes the post- Westphalian drama of the “withering away of the states.” One must never forget that this drama’s final result may be both a new and oppressive world Leviathan, and a new and emancipated world Utopia.

4) On the quasi-biological nature of major social and political upheavals. As I. Prigogine and I. Stengers explain in their prominent book entitled Order Out of Chaos, major social and political changes are much more a matter of quasi-biological spontaneity than a planned conspiracy (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984). Of course, this does not mean that conspiracy does not exist at all. On the contrary, conspiracy is the very substance of politics. However, it is the conspiracy itself, which should be explained by the entire- ty of social and political process, not conversely. This important epistemological statement can be applied to the Balkan war as well: S. Milošević’s and F. Tuđman’s well-known conspiracy (the Karađorđevo plan to dismember Bosnia and Herzegovina and create a Greater Serbia and a Greater Croatia) was certainly one of

124 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović the major factors of the Balkan war. This conspiracy itself should be explained as part of the overall history of the region.

2. After the collapse: The Chaos, the First Contours, and the Predictions

2.1. The chaos: Disorientation in Time and Space

1) Time. “The post-Cold War era” has certainly been one of the most frequent phrases in the public discourse since the end of the Cold War in 1989. The answer to the question whether this phrase is used as a serious analytical tool or is misused as distorting political propaganda, however, decisively depends on the relevant epistemological paradigm. The mainstream liberal paradigm (with its linear image of time) degrades “the Post-Cold War era” into mere political and ideological rhetoric of a victory over communism. The alternative world-systems analysis (with its nonlinear and multilinear conceptualization of time) returns this term to reality. What follows is a summary of such an alternative world-systemic conceptualization and interpretation of the Post-Cold War era.

The modern world-system has been an essentially historical system (“historical capitalism”). According to I. Wallerstein, this system came into existence in the so-called Long Sixteenth Century (1450-1650), in the Mediterranean. In the next five centuries it expanded all over the world, finally incorporating every inch of the globe. Beginning with the First World War, the system reached its structural crisis. Now we are in the midst of a process of “cascading bifurcations” of the crisis that may last until mid-next century. Concretely, 1968 was the first, and 1989 the second point of bifurcation of the cascade (Wallerstein, 1984: 3, 9; Wallerstein, 1991: 51-52, 56).

The Post-Cold War era can be conceptualized and interpreted in

125 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror terms of cyclic rhythms and secular trends as well. Thanks to F. Braudel’s pioneering work, this conceptualization (interpretation) has already reached a plausible empirical (statistical) evidence. According to that evidence, a multiple negative turning point was in 1974. There are at least four cyclic as well as secular declines that started (or continued) in 1974:1) the so-called “contracting, B- phase of the fourth Kondratieff”; 2) the declining phase of the US hegemony; 3) the decline of “the fourth logistics”; and 4) a further decline and exhaustion of the secular trends of the modern world- system. Without going into the specifics of F. Braudel’s terminolo- gy, the course of world-systemic events since 1974 has taken a plurality of essentially negative turns. This multiple decline will supposedly last until 2050, and will most likely be accompanied by massive local, regional, and global disorders (Braudel, 1987: 108-127; Wallerstein, 1986: 158-159; Popović, 1995a). The ongoing multiple decline of the modern world-system was accelerated in 1989. The Yugoslav disintegration was mainly due to the exhaustion of all modernizing energies of the political system, and not only by the collapse of communism.

The collapse of SFR Yugoslavia might have been predicted, although the mainstream liberal paradigm in political science did not do so.

2) Space. The violent disintegration of SFR Yugoslavia was partly due to the concrete zone (space) of the world-system: SFR Yugoslavia was a typical semiperipheral state, and according to the world-systems theory the greatest concentration of anomie and potential for violent confrontation is exactly in semi-peripheral regions and states.

As I. Wallerstein has noted, semiperipheral states have always been the locus of the most violent revolutions and counterrevolu- tions (Wallerstein, 1983: 21). More concretely, the states and fron- tiers of Southern and Southeastern Europe have been fragile and profoundly marked by various divisions and splits most of the

126 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović time (Aymard, 1985: 42, 44). Most concretely, the Balkans and the Mediterranean used to be sharply divided into two hostile worlds (the East and West). This was one of the most dangerous “fault lines” of the modern world-system. This imagined line (Tunisia- Sicily-the Balkans) ran through the Balkans and the Mediterranean for more than five centuries (Braudel, 1987).

3) Disorientation. The Balkan war has been described as the most destructive and frustrating conflict in Europe since the end of the Second World War. The “failure of the new order” to stop the conflict was partly caused by the disorientation of the main international and local actors in time and space. Chaos in the world and chaos in the minds were two sides of the same coin.

The disorientation was mostly a result of the international actors’ failure to adequately conceptualize two major changes in international politics after the Second World War.

The first major change was caused by the advent of nuclear weapons in 1945. This advent radically altered the nature of international politics from geopolitics to technopolitics. Since then, the international (in)significance of a particular country has been a matter of possession of nuclear weapons (or alternatively, oil as a strategic raw material), not a matter of certain geographic location as had been the case in the earlier, traditional geopolitics (McLauchlan, 1989: 99-108).

Due to this major change, after the Second World War the Balkans lost their earlier geopolitical importance. They have consequently fallen to the status of a technopolitically and internationally insignificant, or at best less significant, zone of the world-system.

Unfortunately, this major geo-strategic loss was totally overlooked by the local Balkan elites. Their statements and voluminous other evidence clearly show their constant, although unrealistic, hope for the great powers’ massive military involvement and support.

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Needless to say, this hope in itself additionally fuelled the war.

Unlike the local elites, the great powers and other important international actors were fully aware of the first major change and its repercussions for the Balkans: “Bosnia has no oil”, ironically stated the title of an editorial in The New York Times in 1992, at the very peak of the Yugoslav crisis. However, the international actors fatally overlooked the second major change: the exponential growth of density, sensitivity, and vulnerability of the modern world-system (which is just the other name for I. Prigogine’s nonlinear “far-from-equilibrium state” of the system). Due to this oversight, the international actors constantly lagged behind the events in the war: their handling of the crisis was justifiably criticized as “too little, too late, inadequate”. Of course, this inadequa- cy additionally aggravated the crisis.

Here one must clarify and emphasize that the two above major changes in international politics after the Second World War have had contrary effects on the international significance of the Balkans. The first one (advent of nuclear weapons) caused the Balkans to lose their earlier geopolitical importance. The second one (the exponential growth of the modern world-system) caused the region to achieve a new, indirect type of international importance. More precisely, the exponential growth of the system caused the Balkans to shift from their initial insignificance to a new, indirect importance in only five post-Cold War years. At the outset of the crisis, in 1989, this region was technopolitically and therefore internationally quite insignificant. Only five years later, through the Serbian, Russian, Orthodox, and nuclear as well as Muslim, Islamic, and oil connection, it has become undoubtedly, although indirectly, a highly significant spot (Popović, 1994a).

The differentiation between significant and insignificant zones of the system has become extremely complex and relative. There is no place in today’s world that could not be internationally significant, even critical for the rest of the world. This is probably the

128 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović most important lesson to be learned from the Balkan crisis.

2.2. The First Postcommunist Contours: Processes, Actors, and Regimes

1) The Processes. A new, Post-Cold War type of war and war making has most profoundly determined the postcommunist world. The new type of war was technopolitically enabled by the advent of nuclear weapons. As C. Chase-Dunn and K. O’Reilly prophetically stated in 1989: “While the destructiveness of nuclear weapons has reduced the probability of core wars, it has driven conflicts among core powers to be fought out in peripheral areas with conventional weapons” (Chase-Dunn and O’Reilly, 1989: 77).

The advent of nuclear weapons occurred in 1945, immediately after the World War II. Nevertheless, the new post-Cold War type of war had to wait fifty years to be born. It had hibernated during the Cold War. It was born, released and shaped by the collapse of the Cold War military infrastructure in 1989 and afterwards.

The new political and war pattern has already been noticed and analyzed. More descriptively, the modern war was diagnosed as a “brutal low-intensity sub-regional war” (Bugajski, 1993: 233-238). More theoretically, as we have seen above, it has been defined as a war driven “to be fought out in peripheral areas with conventional weapons”.

To reduce the probability of nuclear holocaust, the political rationality that relies on this kind of peripheralization would have to be a very special, original, although perverted type of rationality. The problem with this type of post-Cold War and postmodern rationality, however, is both ethical and practical. The exponential growth of the density, sensitivity, and vulnerability of the modern world- system, and this is one of the main theses of the world-systems theory, means that the rationality relying on the idea of peripheral-

129 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror ization is doomed to fail.

The Third World War has already begun: it is fragmented into numerous actual or potential peripheral wars, fought by conventional weapons. The Balkan war (1991-95) was the first such peripheral war. For that reason, it has already gained a certain world-systemic significance (Popović, 1992; Popović, 1994c: 237- 243).

2) The Actors. A sociological analysis of the actors of the violent disintegration of SFR Yugoslavia, and of the violent creation of the new states, should, if possible, be comprehensive, so as to include all relevant elements. Both internal and international actors, systemic as well as anti-systemic ones, and particularly anti-nationalistic and anti-war actors, movements and processes ought to be analyzed. The analysis should particularly focus on the collapse of the last modernizing Yugoslav political movement, which was led by the last Prime Minister of SFR Yugoslavia, Ante Marković, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The analysis should also focus on the rise of new anti-modernistic and aggressively nationalistic projects and actors. The latter were born and have grown in a process of complex interaction and fusion of the old and new communist and postcommunist nomenclatures, on the one hand, and the so-called intellectual or cultural elites, on the other hand (Novak-Pešec, 1989; Popov, 1993; Kuljić, 1993: 61-73; Republika, 1993; Republika, 1993a; Popović, 1994).

3) The Regimes. The contemporary popularity of phrases such as: the “Post-Cold War era”, the “postmodern time”, the “postcommunist political regimes” etc. suggests an obsession with the prefix “post”. The prefix “post”, however, can be viewed differently. On the one hand, in the negative sense, it is logically incorrect: the label “postcommunist political regimes”, for example, says nothing positive and informative about the regimes (it only says that they emerge immediately after communism). On the other hand, despite its logical incorrectness, the prefix “post”, as well as the

130 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović label “postcommunist”, is historically correct: these regimes are still in a process of development, and no one can decidedly pre- dict, or precisely label, what final shape they will eventually assume.

The process of development of the Balkan regimes has been extremely open, uncertain, ambivalent, and contradictory. It has been carried by at least two conflicting social and political streams: 1) a revolutionary stream of popular demands and struggles for greater equity and democracy, and 2) a counter-revolutionary stream of old and new political elites’ greedy quest for ever more power.

The descriptions and definitions that capture and express this open, ambivalent, and contradictory character of the early postcommunist processes and regimes include, first of all, G. Arrighi’s concept of “extreme ethnonationalist democratic regimes” and I. Wallerstein’s concept of “democratic fascism” (Arrighi, 1990: 34; Wallerstein, 1991: 60). Similarly, they include S. Darmanović’s notion of “distorted democracy” and M. Popović’s concept of “liberal fascism” (Darmanović, 1993; Popović, 1994).

A dramatic rise and role of extreme ethnonationalism have among other things characterized the postcommunist world. Far from being a primordial or natural force (as the mainstream dogma echoes), the postcommunist ethnonationalism has been a purely political fabrication. As V. Vujačić and V. Zaslavsky revealed, “the Yugoslav (postcommunist) crisis has its structural roots in the communist nationality policy. This policy [...] generated [...] the institutionalization of ‘ethnic power’ in the republics” (Vujačić and Zaslavsky, 1991: 131). And this very “ethnic power”, not ethnicity by itself, generated war: “There was no spontaneous resur- gence of submerged or repressed ‘ethnic hatreds’, but rather a pur- poseful and active creation and exploitation of such hatred as a means of stopping or slowing shifts in the locus and structure of power” (Gagnon, 1994: 119).

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In the worst cases (like in the Balkans), the postcommunist greed for power caused a recurrence of the most disastrous and fascist- like consequences (mass murders, concentration camps, “ethnic cleansing”, genocide). Because of these horrifying consequences, the respective postcommunist regimes have already been labelled as a very special kind of fascism: “low-tension fascism”, “peripheral or Balkan fascism of second generation”, and “total-nationalism” (Močnik, 1990; Popović, 1994d: 81-85, 122-127; Moren, 1993).

2.3. Predictions and Alternatives

Unlike the mystical manner of religious and ideological prophecy, the manner of scientific prediction is quite empirical: the prediction is an extrapolation of existing and empirically observable cyclic rhythms and secular trends (Poper, 1996: 106).

The history and future are open and uncertain. Progress is possible, but not inevitable (Wallerstein, 1984: 3). This is quite evident in “Kairos, a transformational TimeSpace” in which we are living today. Here is also the link between theory or knowledge and practice or action: “We are faced with historical choices (which are) moral” (Wallerstein, 1992: 35-36).

According to the world-systems analysts, four alternative scenarios for the future of the modern world-system until 2050 can be predicted. They are: 1) nuclear and ecological holocaust; 2) quasi-feudal fragmentation; 3) neo-fascist centralization; and 4) a new creative answer, i.e. a new historical system which would be more egalitarian and more democratic than historical capitalism (Amin, Arigi, Frank, Volerstin, 1985; Wallerstein, 1991; Wallerstein, 1992; Huntington, 1993: 22-49; Popović, 1994b). The first elements of these four scenarios could be easily recognized and identified in the chaos in the Balkans, and especially in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. That is why this war had a broader, world-systemic significance, and not merely a local or regional one.

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So far, a very complex and retrograde mixture of quasi-feudal fragmentation and neo-fascist centralization has prevailed in the Balkans. Due to this mixture, the Balkans has again become a paradigm of regression and destruction. This does not necessarily have to remain so. There is a clear dialectical chance: a heavy experience of regression and destruction could, in theory, provoke and accelerate the emergence of a new creative option. The Balkans could become a privileged locus of progression.

Whether or not the progression or regression will ultimately prevail, both in the Balkans and more globally, will be decided in the coming dramatic and uncertain decades. A new historical system will be born, but not before the middle of the next century. What we are witnessing today, in the first decade of the Post-Cold War era, however, is quite the opposite: a new world disorder, not the so-called New World Order (the rhetoric of the so called New World Order has been just a matter of political propaganda and mass psychology, a complex reaction of the masses and elites of the West and East to the threats and uncertainties of the new disorder).

3. Initiatives and Proposals

The post-Cold War Balkan crisis has been justifiably qualified as the most difficult crisis in Europe after the Second World War. Because of that, the crisis has already become a matter of great and concerted efforts (peace plans, initiatives, and proposals) of diverse local and international, governmental and-nongovernmental actors and institutions. What follows is just a short and provisional review, typology, and commentary of these plans, initiatives, and proposals.

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This review is based on two combined criteria:

The first is the criterion of time, including the short-term, middle- term, and long-term initiatives, proposals and plans. A short-term period is a period from one day up to one year; a middle-term period is a period from one year up to ten years; a long-term period is a period longer than ten years.

The second is the criterion of space, scope and actors concerned (local or national, international or transnational; governmental or nongovernmental, etc.).

The two criteria largely overlap: most of the governmental actions are short or middle-term oriented, and thus limited in their ulti- mate effect. Most of the nongovernmental ideas and actions seek a long-term, just, durable, and peaceful solution. Since the overlapping is not complete, however, the two criteria retain their relatively independent quality and role.

Bearing these introductory comments in mind, diverse initiatives and proposals for peace and a new order in the Balkans in the post-Cold War era in general and in this very moment in particular could be reviewed and categorized in the following way:

1. Short-term and medium-term initiatives, proposals, and plans. 1.1. Short-term and middle-term initiatives, plans, and proposals by the so-called international community, namely by the great powers’ public and secret diplomacy (The Carrington plan of 1991; The Vance plan of 1991; The Coutillierro plan of 1992; The Vance-Owen plan of 1993; The Contact Group plan of 1994; and finally The Dayton Peace Accords of 1995). 1.2. The so-called “Four D” (demilitarization, denazification, decartelizaction, and democratization) plan. This plan was firstly implemented in the post-Nazi Germany. Numerous analysts and actors, however, argued that the plan could and should have been implemented in the Balkans as well (for example, the Social

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Democratic Party of Montenegro advocated a plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina that included a demilitarization of all military and paramilitary groups, as well as a temporary UN protectorate for the ravaged country). 1.3. Ideas and initiatives advocating the establishment of an Organization on Security and Cooperation in Southeastern Europe. According to these initiatives, the organization would be part of a new, broader, and more egalitarian, cooperative and democratic Europe. It would also be a component of the OSCE. Such an organization would not only be a temporary peace solution, but a permanent instrument of war-prevention (Galtung, 1994; Žarko Puhovski in Popović, 1994d: 37). 1.4. The Woodrow Wilson Center’s comparative studies of the “transitions from authoritarian rule and prospects for democracy” in Latin America and Southern Europe also contain useful analo- gies for the Balkans. Latin America, Southern Europe, and Southeastern Europe share the same semiperipheral pattern of the capitalist world-economy, and that makes the studies directly relevant for the Balkans. 2. Long-term initiatives include, in the first place, the idea and practice of free, open, and multi-cultural cities. However weak and rudimentary, the cities have proven to be the only elements of the devastated Bosnia and Herzegovina and SFR Yugoslavia which have not been totally destroyed by aggressive nationalism and war. They are the last remnants of civil resistance and multicultural tolerance surviving in the Post-Cold War Balkans. The cities could be of utmost importance not only for the Balkans but also for the whole of Europe. These isolated elements of civil society could evolve into a new creative answer: international civil society and global bottom-to-top democracy. In addition, the idea of an international society is an organizing idea that is much more appropriate to the complex process of the “postmodern reconstruction” than the famous idea of human rights (Falk, 1992: 5-6). There are several reasons for this. First, from a purely logical point of view, the idea of an international civil society is much broader and complex a concept than that of human rights. The former comprises

135 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror the latter, but not vice versa. Secondly, negatively speaking, the concept of an international civil society is much more immune to the so-called double standards and abuses by the great powers than the concept of human rights. Thirdly, and finally, positively speaking, the idea of an international civil society could become a solid and reliable basis for a new synthesis deriving from the surviving remnants of modernity (anti-etatism, along with an insistence on the respect for minority and human rights, which could and should be taken from liberalism, and the recognition of an inherent interdependence between economy and human rights, which could and should be taken from socialism). 3. Projects and proposals combining all previous perspectives and measures (long-term, medium-term, and short-term ones) are the most promising of all. In my view, the most appropriate, balanced and successful combination of these different perspectives and measures have been the Vukobrat Proposals for a New Commonwealth of the Republics of ex-Yugoslavia in 1993. A similar combination of short-term needs and long-term perspectives can be found in the SECI initiative and EU’s policy of regional- ism. An appropriate and balanced combination of long-term, medium-term, and short-term perspectives is crucial. A lack of middle and short-term perspectives turns even the best long-term project into a bad Utopia or, even worse, a mere facade, whereas a lack of the long-term perspective turns even the most elaborate short and middle-term plan into a bad realpolitik. The former was characteristic of real-socialism (and related currents of Marxism), the latter of real-capitalism (and related currents of Liberalism). Since the bad Utopia and the facade of real-socialism irreversibly collapsed in 1989, the bad realpolitik, a kind of systemic myopia of real-capitalism, has remained as the most important and urgent problem of the Post-Cold War age. If nothing more, the Post-Cold War Balkan crisis has conclusively revealed this potentially fatal imperfection of real-capitalism and realpolitik through the inade- quacy of international intervention in the Balkan carnage.

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4. Instead of Conclusion: A Critique of Old Realpolitik and a Plea for New Realism

Numerous proponents of the old realpolitik have frequently denounced new politics (the idea of an international civil society and a global bottom-to-top democracy) as a bad Utopia. The exponential growth of density, sensitivity, and vulnerability (especially ecological and nuclear density, sensitivity, and vulnerability) of the modern world-system, however, has radically changed, even reversed, the earlier positions and meanings of these two politics. Ignoring this growth, the old realpolitik has become a possible, but bad and perilous Utopia (nuclear and ecological holocaust). Conversely, taking growth into account, a new political realism (international civil society and global grassroots solidarity and democracy) has definitely become indispensable to human survival.

The same idea could be expressed through an ironic paraphrase. While instigating the aggressive nationalism and violence at the very beginning of the crisis, Slobodan Milošević (the Serbian leader and oligarch) stated stubbornly: “Serbia will either be united or there will no longer be a Serbia”. The same sentence structure could be used in a world-system context, to say that today, the Humanity will either be united and democratized or there will no longer be a Humanity at all.

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Aleksandar Fatić and Milan Popović NATO Expansion and Balkan Testing Grounds September 1999

Introduction

This article serves a dual purpose. Its aim is to explore the possible military aspirations inherent in the most recent policy decisions taken by NATO as concerns Southeastern Europe, and to draw certain sociological and broader strategic conclusions from the rather bizarre dialectics of the relationship between NATO’s repeated abortive attempts to help foster a democracy in South- eastern Europe and the region’s anti-democratic regimes. The first aspiration is mainly embedded in the first part of the paper, while the letter is dealt with in the second part.

The reasons for addressing with these two issues in a single analysis is because we believe that it is the connection between these two types of considerations that may break new ground in understanding the nature of the new international relations and the role military force and diplomacy play in it. The observations and conclusions presented herein draw not only on theoretical insights, but also on the first-hand experience of the NATO bombing of Serbia and Montenegro in 1999, and the immediate social and political circumstances and consequences of this campaign.

The Creation of Conditions for NATO Expansion

At the long announced July 1997 NATO “supersummit” in Madrid the North Atlantic Treaty Organization made the decision to

143 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror expand into countries (the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary) that were invited to join the organization in the so-called “first wave” of accessions.

NATO expansion plans have not ended with the above. Almost all eastern European countries, are members of the “Partnership for Peace” program, which for some of them serves as a military and political waiting room for full NATO membership (Croatia, FR of Yugoslavia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina are not members of the PfP program).

The expansion of NATO has provoked rather radical changes in the European defense. The mechanism that held a balance between two destructive arsenals of atomic and conventional weaponry no longer exists. At the same time, however, there appears to be no effective alternative mechanism in place.

All Eastern European states see the lack of a military and ideological umbrella as a time bomb in terms of their security. This is why most countries of the region see the expansion of NATO as the only remaining reasonable option for maintaining peace and relative security in Eastern Europe.

Interests of the New NATO Members

From the point of view of the Eastern European states seeking membership, the desire to join is, on the one hand, rational. They want guarantees of security by a military organization that is able to deter any potential aggressor, so that they can concentrate their policies and resources on development and European integration issues. On the other hand, however, the investments required for NATO membership, relating to weapons standardization and adjustments to military communication systems, go well beyond the present budgetary defense plans of the potential NATO-mem-

144 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović ber states. These investments are comparable in size to those that these countries would have to generate in order to build up their independent defense potential in light of the transformed European defense constellation, should they have not planned membership in NATO (Wieczorek and Zukrovska, 1997: 41, footnote 3).

Another important role is played by the political judgement by Central European states that benefits of NATO-membership, in the long run, by far exceed the benefits of investing in independent defense systems. NATO membership is also followed by the creation of political and trade relations, purchasing of US weapons, standardization and harmonization of command and control chains, and closer cooperation between the member-states in other areas as well. For a number of years now a debate on the “cultural position” of certain states has been going on in Eastern Europe. The “Central” European countries tend to declare themselves as essentially different from other Eastern European countries, in the sense of having belonged to the ‘Western’ civilization from time immemorial. In the military context, this is often more or less identified with a “natural right” to full NATO membership. Accordingly, other eastern countries are assigned to an “Eastern” civilization realm, which, again very superficially, tends to be identified with a “natural tendency” to cooperate militarily and politically with Russia.

Generally, it could be argued that the motivations of Central European countries for NATO accession are multiple: they do not relate only to defense. On the political side, the central European countries probably have an authentic interest in joining NATO. Membership in NATO is a step on the way to European integration with very concrete economic consequences and benefits in areas not connected with defense. On the military side, however, Russia remains the only state in Europe with virtually no prospects of fully-fledged NATO membership, yet a state that has legitimate and important security interests in Eastern Europe. This places it in a peculiar position that needs to be properly under-

145 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror stood if adequate assessments are to be made concerning the European security architecture in the new millenium.

The Traditional Security Doctrines

The traditional defense doctrines of NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organization were mutually dependent. They were based on mutual threats by nuclear destruction, while conventional defense strategies were based on a massive mobilization of armored forces in Europe and engagement in the central European buffer zones. The Americans and Soviets treated Central Europe as a battle- ground where their interests would clash and be resolved on the conventional level. The interplay between conventional and atomic warfare was a more complicated equation that nobody really wanted to count with too seriously, as it would have involved mutually assured annihilation of populations and territories. Thus the Central European buffer zones were immense strategically important to both superpowers. The conventional concept of superpower warfare in Europe stressed the division of alliances and the importance of loyalty of particular European countries to their superpower mentors.

The US conventional doctrine has always been based on the use of advanced military technology and overseas engagement in order to preclude any aggressor from ever reaching US territory. The USSR conventional doctrine was considerably different. Namely, although NATO and the Warsaw Treaty had almost the same doctrine on the conventional level, the defense strategies of both the US and Soviet Union were considerably different from those of their respective defense alliances. Both countries had defense doctrines independent of the composite war strategies of the alliances they led.

Considering that, unlike the USA, the USSR was not separated from a potential aggression by sea, its conventional defense strate-

146 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović gy was based on the availability of depth of territory to absorb the initial strike. This was to be followed by a massive cumulative mobilization, surrounding of the enemy troops, and waging an exhausting positional warfare until the enemy is demoralized, isolated and vulnerable to strong frontal attacks. Alternatively, the strategy involved pushing the enemy troops outside the Soviet borders and pursuing them in co-engagement with the allied Warsaw Treaty armies. The former Yugoslavia had a similar defense doctrine, adapted to the concept and conditions of the so- called “partisan warfare”.

Conventional concepts of war between the two global military blocs were based on striking force, which made balance of power the determining factor of stability in Europe, mostly on the nuclear, but also on the conventional level. (The Warsaw Treaty Organization is referred to here either by full name, or as the Warsaw Treaty, rather than by the abbreviation WTO, as the latter is now mostly used to designate the World Trade Organization.)

The New Strategic Realities

At present, Russia has around 1.2 million active soldiers, who are so poorly funded that their effectiveness in the case of conflict would be doubtful. On the other hand, the US has 1.5 million active soldiers, with an annual budget of 250 billion US$. Moreover, NATO troops include 350,000 well trained, equipped and funded soldiers of the German Bundeswehr, the equally well or better trained, equipped, and financed contingents of British, French and other Western European armies. This military organization is now enlarged by the inclusion of Hungarian, Czech, and Polish troops. Quite apart from considerably strengthening NATO’s conventional striking force, the inclusion of the Central European states is bringing NATO to a territorial proximity to the Russian borders unprecedented in the bi-polar history of Europe.

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Simultaneously with this almost triumphant expansion of NATO towards Russia, as a result of the ending of Communism in Russia the Russian troops have had to withdraw more then 1,000 km east- wards after the dismantling of the Berlin wall (Simić, 1997: 11-24; Fatić, 1997: 193-204).

In 1995 only, before any enlargement, the total expenditure of NATO members for military needs was around 407 billion US$, while the Russian expenditure was at around 13 billion US$. After the expansion, this discrepancy will be even more dramatic.

If NATO continues to expand, and the Baltic states are also invited to join the Alliance, this will mean that Moscow Military District will become the front-line of Russian defense, for the first time in 300 years of Russian peacetime history. Crucially, this means that Russian conventional defense doctrine will become obsolete, as there will no longer be a depth of territory available to absorb a first strike. As a result, a new defense doctrine will be necessary. In theory at least, the only alternative such doctrine would involve strengthening Russia’s conventional, especially motorized and armored forces on the borders with new NATO members and lift- ing the combat readiness of the conventional troops. This, if implemented, would necessarily lead to an increase of tensions on the Russian borders with NATO members.

In such a scenario, on a nuclear level, Russia would be forced to preserve and enhance its existing nuclear doctrine, based on extended deterrence and first strike. Russia may well be forced to abort the ratification of nuclear disarmament treaties that the Russian Government has signed, and keep a high nuclear first strike capacity in the Central European military theatre. This is especially true after the American Congress has refused to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in October 1999. While the Russian defense budget was cut down in 1999, thus making the above scenario less likely, given that Russia is a nuclear power with seething animosities towards its new, defen-

148 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović sive international position, risk cannot be altogether eliminated that a more aggressive stance could be adopted in the medium-to- long term by its military and political leadership.

While diplomats exchange pleasantries in the European capitals, Russian and NATO troops might well look upon one another along gun barrels over the Russian-NATO borders. This insecurity scenario would not benefit any Central or Eastern European country, including the new Central European NATO members.

Strategy and Politics in Southeastern Europe

The above-discussed strategic realities have peculiar reflections on the political shape of Southeastern Europe. Internal politics in the region, and especially so in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia over the past decade, have displayed a tremendous ability to adapt to the shifting strategic circumstances and to use them, as it were, almost as an ally in the quest for preservation of power and influence on a local and regional level. Even the open antagonism displayed towards Serbia by NATO, culminating in an eleven week long assault on Serbia and Montenegro that started in the Spring of 1999 has not decisively shifted the ability of the region’s regimes to use external antagonisms to generate internal support and consolidate its hold on power. Some features of this complicated relationship between western military expansionism and local political manipulation deserve special attention.

Necessary Foes: Slobodan Milošević and NATO in Pursuit of Power

NATO bombardment of Serbia and Montenegro in the spring of 1999 clearly revealed the difference between proclaimed objec-

149 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror tives and actual effects of a policy. The cataclysmic series of lethal effects and counter-effects of the bombing campaign was quite evident. One of these effects was an acceleration of the process of mass expulsion of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, a rapid rise in the civilian casualties, a considerable weakening of nascent democratic forces in FR Yugoslavia, strengthening of the main source of chaos and violence in the region, namely Slobodan Milošević’s aggressive nationalistic regime. Despite all of the attendant political propaganda, these counter-effects of the bombardment are undeniable.

The gap between words and deeds gives rise to numerous explana- tory models. According to the most popular and dominant “error mythology”, the so-called “collateral damages” is just an unavoidable mistake in an otherwise superior Western policy. However, the chaotic rise in the numbers of such errors calls for a deeper explanation. To put it in William Shakespeare’s famous phrase, there must be some system in this chaos and madness.

The second is the so-called “conspiracy mythology”. The post- Cold War Balkan crisis, and particularly the NATO bombing in 1999, have been their privileged domains. According to Serbian regime’s propaganda, the whole world participates in a conspiracy against Serbs and their state. The hysteria fabricated by this propaganda has fuelled protracted wars in the former Yugoslavia. Ironically enough, some real aspects of the crisis support the opposite versions of this surreal mythology. According to one of them, the mass expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo, one of the so-called counter-effects, was, in fact, a hidden objective of NATO bombardment. According to that version, the NATO bombardment in 1999 could be interpreted as the final phase of a ten year long genocidal conspiracy of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians against the Balkan Muslims, or, in other words, as a kind of tacit alliance between Slobodan Milošević’s regime and the western powers. Close to this is the Marxist-like version of conspiracy theory. According to that version, what we have been

150 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović witnessing in the Balkans over the last decade has been simply the most recent form of a very well known alliance between real-capitalism and neo-fascism in their predatory conspiracy and war against the working class and the people in general.

Many or at least some of the error and conspiracy theories contain fragmented and isolated parts of the truth.

A plausible parallel with chemistry can be drawn here. In chemistry, the totality, structure, and logic of a system can be viewed as the mechanism of valence. In politics, the role of chemical valence is played by interest. Interest is the chemistry of politics. It is what most deeply explains a complex relationship between international real-capitalism and Balkan neo-fascism or, in the most recent phase of the relationship, the connection between the 1999 NATO bombardment of Serbia and Montenegro and Slobodan Milošević’s regime.

A systemic understanding of the relationships and connections, based on interest, opposed to both error and conspiracy mytholo- gies, has been recently advocated by some prominent alternative social analysts and theorists. So the Slovenian theorist Tomaž Mastnak, coming from a “nation-state” school of thinking, argues: “The correspondence between the political language and practical policies of Serbian fascism and the predominantly liberal-democratic West is not accidental. The alliance between liberals and fascists that has come into existence with the Bosnian war is held together by their shared anti-statism.” (Mastnak, 1996: 69) Immanuel Wallerstein, one of the most prominent alternative social theorists today advocates the “international capital” argument and school: “Why has the U.S. government singled out this civil war for active intervention? [...] Perhaps the political issue for the U.S. is precisely the need to justify the very existence of NATO. But why would the U.S. want to have NATO at all? There seem to me to be two main reasons. One is that its existence in turn justifies the current military expenditures and indeed build-up

151 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror in the U.S. [...] The second is that NATO is necessary to prevent the West Europeans to stay too far from U.S. control and above all from establishing an autonomous armed structure separate from NATO” (Wallerstein, 1999).

After a long ten years of the diabolic cooperation in the spring of 1999 the West and Slobodan Milošević, the two main actors of the post-Cold War Balkan drama, finally entered the stage of a lethal confrontation. In a deeper sense, however, the very confrontation was perverse. Milošević and NATO are not pure and unambiguous enemies, but a couple of bizarre and mutually necessary enemies. They are not two absolutely separate and antagonistic worlds, as it is pictured in everyday political propaganda, but the two sides of a single post-Cold War structure of political and military relations. According to Slovenian theorist, Slavoj Žižek, “So the lesson is that the alternative between the New World Order and the neo- racist nationalists opposing it is a false one: these are the two sides of the same coin - the New World Order itself breeds monstrosi- ties that it fights.” (Žižek, 1999)

What has been gained and what has been lost in this diabolic ten year long process?

What has the Serbian regime gained from international real-capitalism and realpolitik in these ten years? During the first, cooperative phase of the story, it was a very special cocktail mixed of two equally inadequate and counter-productive factors, namely negoti- ations with the dictator, and isolation of the people. This decisively contributed to the rise and consolidation of a new authoritarian and destructive power in the region. Wittingly or unwittingly, a system of non-discriminatory international sanctions paved the way to an economy based on smuggling chains, a warlike society, and semi-fascist policies. In the same direction, a permanent and exclusive negotiation with the dictator importantly contributed to the legitimization and consolidation of his powers. What we are witnessing today, during the second, confrontational phase of the

152 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović story, however, is not an essential change, but a continuation and even escalation of the old pattern and its lethal counter-effects in a new, antagonistic way.

What has the West i.e., its political and military complex, gained from Milošević in return. This is a less visible, but not an entirely unknown side of the story. The post-Cold War Balkan turmoil has served as an ideal opportunity and testing ground at first for a mere political survival, and then for a necessary political adaptation and redesign of the post-Cold War political and military infrastructure. The regime has mercilessly rented its own country, territory and people to the West to be used for the deadliest exercises and tests of the new post-Cold War international, political, security, and technological systems and strategies. The NATO bombardment was just the most terrible part of this perverse and brutal lease arrangement.

Some of the most recent strategic analyses clearly show how Kosovo conflict and NATO bombardment at its peak have accelerated a series of significant changes in current international relations, most significantly a shift from its chaotic Post-Cold War mono-polarity to a new semi-chaotic multi-polarity (Stratfor, 1999). Whether this and other changes will finally end in a new and stable multi-polarity, or deteriorate into a kind of new Cold War bi-polarity, is still unclear, but the extremely dependant, passive, and suicidal role the Balkans have played in these processes is clear.

There is a multitude of very different historical, economic, social, cultural, geopolitical, international and other factors, which, together, have made the Balkans a privileged terrain for the ongoing post-Cold War political and military exercises: the semiperipheral position of the region in the modern world-system, its location on one of the most dangerous European fault-lines, consequent and permanent warfare, an authoritarian and violent political culture, and last but not least, a lack of nuclear capabilities.

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However, all these and other similar factors have been only potential and passive elements of the scene. Aggressive nationalistic regimes have been the main trigger of the crisis and warfare. Finally and most importantly, if this war had not broken and spread, NATO, as well as the entire western political and military complex, would have possibly lost their overall raison d’etre.

Lessons and Alternatives

Unlike mainstream liberal theorists and ideologists, who aggressively announced a would-be arrival of peace and democracy all over the world, alternative thinkers were much more cautious at the very outset of new post-Cold War age: “it is not true that the Cold War has ended. Rather, it has perhaps half-ended [...] US policy will be ‘more of the same’ [...] For the United States, much of the basic framework of the Cold War remains intact.” (Chomsky 1991: 28, 59) The post-Cold War Balkan tragedy has strongly confirmed this early skepticism and criticism. As the most competent studies show, heavy burden of the Cold War legacy, its interests, ideologies and policies, and especially its prolonged anti-Communist oversimplification, latent racism, and the so-called political realism, have decisively contributed to this tragedy (Woodward, 1995). NATO bombardment in the spring of 1999, with its lethal series of effects i.e. counter-effects, was just the culmination of this contribution. “Could it be that citizens around the world will feel deeply disillusioned if, or when, they find out that this whole action was not about saving refugees and averting a humanitarian crisis but, rather, about power, strategic and economic interests, deliberately creating a new ‘fault line’ or Cold War.” (Oberg, 1999)

The post-Cold War Balkan tragedy, and particularly its culminating phase in 1999, disclosed numerous systemic limits and inade- quacies of the continuing Cold War thinking and policy in the

154 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović region during last decade.

First, the crisis has painfully proven that the world space is much denser, and historical time much faster today, at the end of the XX century, than they used to be yesterday, in the XIX century. Ten years ago, at its very beginning, the crisis was of marginal international importance. In only two or three succeeding years, however, the crisis has increasingly achieved a primary international importance (Popović, 1998: 34-35). In the meantime, a “cataclysmic short-termism” (John Roper), and their inability to notice the change in density of space and time, caused the European Union and the West to commit a series of tragic mistakes. Eventually, these mistakes have seriously threatened and damaged not only the Balkans, but also Europe as a whole. At a peak, these mistakes caused a dangerous “boomerang against the West” (Oberg, 1999). The alternative to this pattern is quite clear. A new, complex, holistic and timely thinking is not only a matter of intellectual epistemology, but also a matter of political survival. This new thinking is not only in the interest of the Balkans, but in the interest of the West as well. The newly established Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe has generally accepted this basic lesson and alternative.

Second, the crisis has repeatedly shown that the international system and politics today is increasingly becoming a two-way process. The highly complex and dynamic international system at the end of the XX century cannot be successfully governed by an anachronistic, rigid, one-way policy characteristic for the XIX century. Neo-colonial patterns of international relations today are not only undemocratic, but also dangerous. A two-way politics, pluralism, and democracy today are not only matters of morality, altruism, and humanism, but also, increasingly, matter of political pragmatism and efficiency. The war-torn Balkan countries desperately need long-term economic and political aid, investment, and support by the West. The West itself, however, has to be changed in this process. To avoid its earlier mistakes in the Balkans and

155 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror elsewhere, it has to leave or overcome its own historical and systemic boundaries and prejudices. This is a two-way learning process (Hodge and Grbin, 1996). Will Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other devastated Balkan entities become new colonial domains or newly associated and eventually full members of an extended European Union is still uncertain, but what is quite certain is that this development is of no less importance for Europe than for the Balkans.

Thirdly and finally, the crisis has convincingly demonstrated a rapidly and dangerously decreasing capability of the so-called “old realpolitik” to cope with new post-Cold War reality. This unfortunate decrease has been evident on the international, as well as on the local level. The traditional state apparatus, political elites, and governmental bodies, on both international (great powers) and local levels, have proven ever less effective and ever less responsible. The criminal irresponsibility of Balkan elites has been notorious. Less obvious but not less detrimental, however, has been a “too little, too late, inadequate” type of behavior of the great powers, as well. The societal alternative to a new Leviathan, i.e. a global capitalist dominance, is generally well known. An international civil society, “self-protected society” (Karl Polanyi), a transnational grass roots network, a strong non-governmental sec- tor: the names are numerous and different, but the idea is the same. Again, the realization of this idea remains extremely difficult and unpredictable. “The way to fight the capitalist New World Order is not by supporting local proto-fascist resistances to it, but to focus on the only serious question today: how to build transnational political movements and institutions strong enough to seriously constrain the unlimited rule of the capital” (Žižek, 1999).

References

Chomsky, Noam (1991). Deterring Democracy. London: Verso.

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Fatić, Aleksandar (1997). “New exclusivism in international relations,” Međunarodni problemi (International Relations), Vol. XLIX, No. 2-3.

Hodge, Carole and Grbin, Mladen (1996). A test for Europe: Confidence-Building in Former Yugoslavia. Glasgow: Institute of Russian and East European Studies of the University of Glasgow.

Mastnak, Tomaž (1996). “Fascists, Liberals, and Anti- Nationalism,” in R. Capland and J. Faffer, editors, Europe’s New Nationalism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Oberg, Jan (1999). “NATO’s War: Boomerang Against the West,” April 30.

Popović, Milan (1998). “After the Collapse,” Montenegro Journal of Foreign Policy, Vol. 3, No. 1-2.

Simić, Predrag (1997). “Plans for the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty: On the eve of the NATO summit in Madrid,” Review of International Affairs, Vol. XLVIII, No. 1055.

Stratfor (1999). “Kosovo Conflict Accelerates Formation of Russia-China Strategic Alliance,” http://www.stratfor.com, June 25.

Wallerstein, Immanuel (1999). “Bombs Away!” April.

Wieczorek, P. and Zukrowska, K. (1997). “The costs of Polish integration with NATO,” Peace and Security, Vol. XXIX, June.

Woodward, Susan L. (1995). Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.

Žižek, Slavoj (1999). “Against the Double Blackmail,” April.

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Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović

Nebojša Medojević and Milan Popović Unholy Alliance January 2001

The cigarette smuggling business across the Adriatic is just one of the numerous segments of an incredibly well organized international network, where you can hardly draw a line between typical crime and normal business operations. This business, which has been going on for at least a hundred years now and which has already become a global phenomenon and problem, is based on a simple logic, the logic behind the notorious alcohol smuggling at the time of the great economic crisis in late 1920s. Namely, this is a scheme which brings together big capital, big politicians, and big criminals, and which is functioning in the following fashion: big capitalists corrupt big politicians, who, in turn, enact such laws that pave the way for illegal activities, which are then carried through by big criminals. Thus, it is now well known that a key role in the passage of the XVIII Amendment to the US Constitution on Prohibition (ban on manufacturing and sale of alcohol) was played by the distinguished American senator Joseph Kennedy, father of US President John Kennedy and that at the time many people publicly linked him to Al Capone. So, for example, Frank Costello, better known as “Premier in the Underworld”, told Peter Maas, the author of a book entitled Velani’s Papers, that Joseph Kennedy and he had been partners in the alcohol business (“The Right Answers”, The Review of the News, October 3, 1973). This astonishing link between the organized crime and the former president’s father has also been confirmed in an article published in the Parade magazine on November 16, 1980.

Also, we have followed very closely the activities of Mr. Ottaviano Del Turco in his capacity as a head of a special com-

159 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror mission of the Italian State set up for the purpose of combating organized crime and now as the finance minister. There is no doubt that he is a highly distinguished and important figure in Italy and the European Union. He attracted particular attention by his most courageous and energetic public campaign against the organized smuggling of American cigarettes into the EU which ended in a civil action brought in New York against the two world cigarette manufacturing giants, Philip Morris and RJ, for organizing cigarette smuggling into the EU, with a claim for damages amounting to USD 3.1 billion. Despite the fact that this business has been going on for decades, with enormous damage to the budgets of many European countries, it was not until the monetary union was launched that it became the object of investigations and court actions. Since the introduction of the single currency by the EU, the problem of the cigarette smuggling has become a fiscal problem. Among other things, it has had a direct impact on the weakening of the European currency against the US dollar. What was more or less a public secret for those with some insight into the tobacco business has now had an epilogue in court. Namely, Mr. Del Turco has publicly accused the two largest world cigarette manufacturers of organizing the smuggling of their cigarettes into the European Union, and of links to the Italian tobacco Mafia headed by Francesco Prudentini, saying that he was surprised that these US companies should be selling their cigarettes through Prudentini, rather than through their legally authorized distribu- tors. It has long been clear that it was the US companies manufacturing these cigarettes that profited most from the smuggling business, since in this way they avoided payment of enormous duties into the budgets of the states in which the cigarettes were sold, while selling their product at much lower prices and boosting their sales. The nonpayment of these duties, which normally amount to 3/4 of the retail price, makes the cigarettes very cheap and afford- able even to smokers from the relatively poor sections of society. This brings about an increase in consumption of these cigarettes and growing profits for the manufacturers, who, faced with enormous taxes and damages claims in the United States, are com-

160 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović pelled to seek new markets for their product. If Philip Morris sells one master case of Marlboro for around 500 DM, and if the production costs are around 100 DM, then a simple calculation shows that the manufacturer’s profit is around 400 DM per master case, which by far exceeds by far individual earnings of all the others in the chain.

It is common knowledge that complete logistics for such operations was done in two European centers, for money laundering in Switzerland and for the goods warehousing in Rotterdam. The very fact that the authorities in European countries have tolerated this smuggling shows best how powerful is the US cigarette manufacturers’ lobby. It was even rumored that the Monica Lewinsky scandal was set up by the tobacco lobby, as their response to a campaign against smoking announced by Hillary Clinton, who pressed for the right of lung cancer sufferers to millions of dollars worth in compensation by cigarette manufacturers.

In brief, had not the US companies made deals with powerful people from the Italian Mafia and had not some West European countries provided the logistical support, the problem of cigarette smuggling would not have been there, nor could any one in Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, Albania, or Macedonia have taken part in this business.

Cigarette smuggling and illegal cigarette selling on the streets are serious internal problems both for Montenegro and for Serbia. The budget of Montenegro loses at least DM 50 million a year and Serbia’s budget as much as DM 1 billion, which is something that any responsible and honest government of poor countries, such as these two, cannot and must not tolerate and therefore the success of the EU officials’ activities aimed at preventing cigarette smuggling cannot but be beneficial for all of us.

So much on the economic aspect of Del Turco’s accusations. The legal and political aspect of these allegations is even more indica-

161 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror tive. Is there any need to underline that no one, including the president of Montenegro, is above or beyond the law, just as is not the case with the president of Italy or of France? However, no one is guilty until proven so. That is why one can’t help noticing in Del Turco’s accusations something that, from a lawyer’s perspective, is an extremely unprofessional use of the prejudicing, conditional “if”. It is even more difficult not to notice the simultaneous publication of these accusations with the publication of Koštunica’s platform in Belgrade, as well as the expected use of these allegations in Belgrade and in Podgorica by the advocates of a Greater Serbia who are opposed to Montenegro’s independence.

This last element fits perfectly into the pattern of an “unholy alliance”, as Tomaž Mastnak, a prominent Slovenian intellectual, some time ago diagnosed the problematic relationship between Slobodan Milošević’s regime and the West. Is there any need to remind any one today that it is such measures as the economic sanctions and the NATO bombing that most directly nurtured an entire neo-Fascist regime and all that it entailed for almost ten years? Not to mention the specially-timed rescue actions aimed at preventing an imminent election defeat in 1996-97, where the main parts were played by an Italian state-owned company and the then and incumbent foreign minister and Del Turco’s colleague Lamberto Dini. “A post-Milošević Serbia still does not exist”, writes these days a distinguished Serbian historian, Latinka Perović. In the interregnum between the Milošević’s Serbia, defeated at the election, but still strong, and the unborn embryo of a post-Milošević Serbia, Koštunica’s Serbia includes numerous and strong relics of the former, especially with regard to the project of a Greater Serbia and to Montenegro. We do not know the personal motives of Minister Del Turco, but we know that his accusations here and now, abundantly fuel these relics. While being, themselves, a relic of an unholy alliance.

Del Turco’s accusations are part of a campaign that says: independent Montenegro equals crime, corruption, Mafia. However,

162 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović the actual situation is quite opposite: a Montenegro as part of a Greater Serbia, in the so-called FRY, equals all these. This is cor- roborated by Del Turco’s accusations themeselves: even if all these allegations were true, it would suffice to pay attention to their dates to see that they all apply to a time when Montenegro was part of the Milošević’s Greater Serbia. What additionally backs the case of our equation, and not the one from the campaign, is the composition of the main political blocks in Montenegro today: the pro-independence camp, in addition to the new arrivals, the Đukanović’s Democratic Party of Socialists since 1997, includes the Liberal Alliance of Montenegro and the Social Democratic Party of Montenegro, parties who were pioneers of an anti-nationalistic and anti-war Montenegro as far back as in 1991. On the other hand, the anti-independence camp comprises yesterday’s Milošević’s national socialists and today’s Koštunica’s “legalists”. Should Del Turco’s accusations yield the fruit that the Serb nationalists are hoping for, we would indeed have before us a strange phenomenon, an injustice and an absurdity: the same “bul- let” causing Montenegro to fall twice in less than ten years. But, political injustice aside, Del Turco’s action fails to score a point even when it comes to realpolitik and pragmatics: any one who knows well the political situation in Montenegro knows that it is an independent (rather than dependent) Montenegro that is a sine qua non of decriminalization and all the other de-s that this country and this entire region need so badly today.

Finally, independent or non-independent Montenegro aside, what Montenegro as well as the region as a whole here and now needs most is not any kind of bias or cheering. What Montenegro needs today desperately is international support and assistance so that it can determine its future in a free and democratic fashion, without prejudice and pressures of Del Turco type.

And with regard to individual responsibility, all those proven guilty in a fair and a transparent procedure, must and should be brought to account, both for smuggling as well as for any other

163 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror offences and crimes that may have taken place in the Balkans over the past decade. Just like all the other advocates of the idea of a free, independent, and democratic Montenegro, we cannot but profit from such a development.

164 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović A Tadpole Transition and Its Alternative April 2000

More than two decades ago, Immanuel Wallerstein, American sociologist, the founder of world-system analysis, and one of the leading alternative intellectuals of our time, wrote about the then so called socialist semiperipheral countries, their position and strategy of change within the contemporary world: “Within the existing framework of the capitalist world-economy, a downturn is more or less advantageous to all semiperipheral countries, but only a few are able to translate that advantage into a real shift in economic position (to that of a ‘core power’) at any given moment in history. To do this, such a semiperipheral country must garner a heavy portion of the collective advantage of the semiperiphery as a whole to itself in particular; that is, a semiperipheral country rising to core status does so, not merely at the expense of some or all core powers, but also at the expense of other semiperipheral powers. This is simply a state-level adaptation of the traditional ‘dog eat dog’ workings of capitalism. This is not ‘development’ but successful expropriation of the world surplus. One need not accept this path as inevitable, much less laud it as path of virtue, and dub it ‘growth, progress, and development’. What R. H. Tawney said of individuals in an unequal world is equally true of states: ‘It is possible that intelligent tadpoles reconcile themselves to the inconveniences of their position, by reflecting that, though most of them will live and die as tadpoles and nothing more, the more for- tunate of the species will one day shed their tails, distend their mouths and stomachs, hop nimbly on to dry land, and croak addresses to their former friends on the virtues by means of which tadpoles of character and capacity can rise to be frogs. This conception of society may be described, perhaps, as the Tadpole Philosophy, since the consolation which it offers for social evils

165 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror consists in the statement that exceptional individuals can succeed in evading them ... And what a view of human life such an attitude implies! ... As though the noblest use of exceptional powers were to scramble to shore, undeterred by the thought of drowning com- panions!’ For those who do not wish to ‘scramble to shore’, the alternative is to seek to transform the system as a whole rather than profit from it.” (Wallerstein, 1979/1976: 100-101)

What one can say about the state of the above problem today? The most concise report on this problem today should probably spell out four most important facts. First, as it is very well known, authoritarian one-party regimes of the so-called socialist countries totally collapsed in and after 1989. Second, the dependent semiperipheral position of these countries in the capitalist world-economy has not only continued but has even been reinforced in the last decade. Third, as a part of this continuation and reinforce- ment, the tadpole philosophy has been also reinforced, especially in these countries, and in this decade. Fourth, the alternative to this philosophy has come into great defensive and disarray. And of course, one should not be at all an expert in social sciences to know that it is exactly ideology of transition, or, to be more precise, ideology of a tadpole capitalist transition which has been the main link and the least common denominator of all previous facts.

What attracts the attention even at first glance, however, is a striking similarity between newly established liberal (postcommunist) and recently collapsed communist rhetoric and ideology of transition. To notice this similarity one should not be an expert at all but just a careful observer of the ongoing process. All of us who were born sometime between 1930s and 1960s and who used to live in the so-called socialist transitional purgatory for several decades remember very well famous communist “catch up” imperatives and austerities as well as its great utopias and promises. These imperatives, austerities, utopias, and promises used to be quite real and functioning elements and forces of our life. Just as are new liberal elements and forces of similar kind today. At least for us

166 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović belonging to the generations born between 1930s and 1960s it is much more difficult to forget and miss than to notice and feel the essential similarity between the two transitional rhetorics and ideologies of our time.

Does this mean that nothing essentially changed in the 1990s? Of course, it does not. Quite the contrary, history has always been a complex combination of continuity and discontinuity, repetition and innovation, permanence and change. Although 1989 did not deliver what was naively and euphorically promised as “the end of history” (Fukujama, 1997), the end of communism and Cold War meant an important change in modern history. Speaking about ideology, it meant an important ideological mutation and re-configuration: the exhaustion of an old and the beginning of a new ideological configuration. One should not be confused with this seeming contradiction at all: perceived similarity and mutation are parts and components of the same process. Essential similarity between communist and liberal “transition” expresses some common and deeper factors and forces of the modernization process, whereas the post-Cold War ideological mutation reflects the most recent moment and change at the very heart of that process. Needlessly to say, postcommunist development in general and post-Yugoslav wars in particular have probably been the most important breeding ground for both ideological continuity (similarity) and discontinuity (mutation) of the process.

What is the most important feature of the ongoing post-Cold War ideological change? What specific ideology, if any, is dominant one in this new and nascent ideological configuration? Conventional answer is well known but wrong. Triumphant behavior of Post-Cold War liberals like Francis Fukuyama and his followers has been aggressive and noisy but impotent and short- lived. Post-Cold War liberal utopia could be taken for granted at the very beginning of Post-Cold War era but not today. Today it is much more visible than yesterday that the world is entering the time “after liberalism”, not the age of pure and victorious liberal-

167 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror ism (Wallerstein, 1995). Liberal ideology preserved its dominance only on surface, in rhetoric. Lip service of “liberalism”, “democracy”, and “human rights” is in a sharp, rising, and compromising contrast with reality. This contrast is a certain sign of weakness (not of strength) of liberal ideology. Under the surface of political rhetoric, deeply within darken spaces and labyrinths of mass psychology and behavior, some other, nonliberal and even antiliberal values and ideologies rise and proliferate. The variety of these ideologies and their mutants after the end of Cold War is pretty great, but one is overarching and dominating all of them, and that is a new kind of social-Darwinism. Post-Cold War social-Darwinism is quite obvious in Balkan and other peripheral and semiperipheral neofascist movements and ideologies of the 1990s, but more careful analysis can detect the same or at least similar social-Darwinist ideological stream in “the clash of civilizations” (Huntington, 1998), and even in a pure and culturally based liberalism designed by Francis Fukuyama. The whole Post-Cold War ideological spectrum has been significantly radiated by this new social-Darwinist ideology. This ideology has become some kind of unexpected and negative Post-Cold War ideological convergence.

The same happened to the ideology of postcommunist transition. This ideology has mostly fallen into the same Post-Cold War social-Darwinist pattern. There are many clear ideological symp- toms and signs expressing this crucial fact. However, only the three, which are the most visible of them, will be mentioned here. First, the greatest part of current postcommunist ideology functions as a kind of “emperor’s new clothes”, namely as an instrument of normalization and legitimization of newly established economic and political power and interests. This simple fact is most evident in the war-torn post-Yugoslav countries, especially in the most devastated of them. “ The postcommunist terrorism, including the war, is a practice of normalization.” (Močnik, 1995: 8) “Civil society”, “liberal democracy”, “multi-ethnic tolerance”, “non-governmental organizations”, “international community”, “market economy”, “private property”, “human rights”, as well as

168 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović the all other sacred postcommunist slogans, have served much more as a cynical political rhetoric and facade, basically hiding reality which is opposite to the rhetoric and facade, than as anything else. Second, the role of international factors in this process of normalization and legitimization has been absolutely essential, constitutive, and indispensable. Rhetorically and publicly, however, these factors represent themselves as strictly and exclusively external to the so-called internal or domestic political process. It goes without emphasizing that this very representation has its own autonomous and specific role in the process. Third, there is a host of explicit ideological phenomena reflecting a tadpole philosophy as a dominant philosophy and spirit of postcommunist time and transition. Suffice it to mention just a rising frustration among local elites and masses as well as a latent but potentially dangerous racism as the main psychological and ideological substances and forces of this time and transition. These phenomena have been only sketched here. A more systematic and profound study of the phenomena has been left for some future occasion. What is following here and now is just a couple of theses focussing on the underlying epistemological premises of this ideology.

First of all, in order to avoid any possible confusion, it should be explicitly stated that one certain part of the mainstream analysis of transition in contemporary political sciences deserves full credit for its professional achievements and results. No doubt, such credit deserves numerous and ramified descriptions and studies of “transitions from authoritarian rule”, which have been systematically and rigorously produced by The Woodrow Wilson Center from Washington D. C. (O’Donnell, Schmitter & Whitehead, 1986) as well as by its multitude followers all over the world. Such credit also deserves democratic engineering based on previous descriptions. There are many extremely significant and useful prescriptions of that kind, whose importance must not be underes- timated at all. There is no doubt, however, that one other part of mainstream analysis of transition deserves serious criticism for its grave analytical shortcomings, insurmountable intellectual contra-

169 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror dictions, and inherent epistemological limitations. Quite generally speaking, the most serious shortcomings, contradictions, and limitations of this analysis have much more negative than positive character, in other words comes much more from what has not been spoken or written than from what has been spoken or written in the analysis. Logicians usually label this type of logical error as a pars pro toto mistake. Relevant economic, social and political facts and factors that are omitted or diminished in the mainstream analysis of transition are numerous, but one among them deserves greatest attention. That fact and factor is the so-called international factor. This factor is the most frequent and unfortunate lacuna in the greater part of this kind of analysis. This lacuna is fatal especially if one keeps in mind a very well known fact that this factor has been an increasingly important factor of our time. The decision making process in economics and politics today has been steadily dislocating from nation-states to international or, better to say, a world level and space. To exclude this level and space from or to underestimate it in the analysis, to focus the analysis exclusively or predominantly on the nation-state level and space, as usually mainstream analysts of postcommunist transition do, means nothing less but to doom oneself to irreparable analytical failure in advance. In addition to this kind of ignorance, exclusion, or underestimation, of course, the real international factor has been regularly distorted too. Ceaseless proliferation of an extremely apologetic image of international politics has been the most standard ideological form of this distortion. Together, all these different ideological forms and fallacies (ignorance, exclusion, underestimate, and apologetics) obscure and turn into a hidden reality what represents probably the most important component of the reality today.

Even for those who are only averagely informed and educated in the modern social sciences, it is not difficult to recognize characteristic epistemological elements and roots of the most of the analyses of postcommunist transition: mainstream economic theory of development, dominant sociological theory of moderniza-

170 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović tion, Newtonian determinism, evolutionary progressivism, deterministic unilinearism, the Enlightenment’s universalism, latent or manifest Westerncentrism, and implicit racism. A majority of these and other epistemological elements and roots, however, have its common and deepest root in “the nation-state” as dominant or even one and only unit of analysis. Social sciences are like auto- matic machines. Initial choice decisively determines final outcome. Nation-state or world-system as sole or dominant unit of analysis at the outset predetermines this or that picture about the reality at the end of cognitive process. Total or partial absence of the so-called international factor from the picture of postcommunist transition comes directly from such an initial choice. Dominant tadpole philosophy of the transition represents just a culmination of such a choice. You get what you ask for. You see what you look for.

To understand correctly and fully, the real position of postcommunist transition in contemporary history and theory, one has to put it at least into the context of the twentieth century. Namely, in the context of the century, it becomes quite clear that the initial rise of the mainstream liberal rhetoric, thought, and practice from the very beginning of 1990s was merely a temporary and short-lived phenomenon. Very soon after that, the post-Yugoslav wars will reestablish what the First and the Second World War from the first half of the century have already and convincingly demonstrated: secular decline of dominant intellectual and political paradigm, global rise of different forms of anti-modernizing forces, development of under-development, loss of earlier belief in historical progress, and general lack of confidence. Due to its reinforced semiperipheral position in the world-system, however, the postcommunist world has become a stronghold of the old and outdated neoliberal paradigm. Latecomers have been late not only in economic practice but in theory as well. Consequently, postcommunist countries have become a privileged zone of undisputed albeit anachronistic rule of ideology of a tadpole philosophy and transition.

171 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror

In principle, the alternative to a tadpole philosophy and transition is very well known. As Immanuel Wallerstein put it, “the alternative is to seek to transform the system as a whole rather than profit from it”. Of course, the system in transformation has been the modern world-system, or the so-called international factor, which has been so obscured and distorted in mainstream analysis and action. In the last two centuries, the emphasis of transformation was at the nation-state and nation-party level. After the self- destructive experience of the so-called old left and its several Internationals, and after the simultaneous secular rise of the inter- nationalization of capital as well, the emphasis has been reasonably shifted toward international, or, more precisely, transnational level and space. Indeed, “the only serious question today (is): how to build transnational political movements and institutions strong enough to seriously constrain the unlimited rule of the capital.” (Žižek, 1999) To rise and institutionalize a “self-protecting society” (Polanyi, 1957) on a world level, or, in other words, to support and build an emerging international (global, world) civil society, this is the most important element of the alternative to a tadpole capitalist philosophy and transition at the threshold of twenty-first century.

Two equally important aspects of the alternative are its intellectual (theoretical, epistemological) and its political (practical, pragmatic) aspect. To act and to understand, these two imperatives have been closely connected and interrelated. New understanding has been a necessary precondition for new political strategy and action. World-system as a whole (not nation-state), as the main unit of social analysis, has been the most important element of this new understanding. Out of this unit it is absolutely impossible even to reach (not to speak about some deeper enlightening of) the hidden and distorted reality of the so-called international factor, and, in addition, out of this reach and enlightenment it is equally impossible to build some new and more effective transnational political strategy and action. An alternative, more holistic and complex social theory has been a necessary ingredient of an alter-

172 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović native, more holistic and complex political practice and transition.

In reality, however, the problem of old and new social theory and practice has been much more difficult and blurred than it appears to be in a more general perspective. What one faces at the very outset of that reality today is an extraordinary but stimulating paradox. On the one hand, “self-protecting society” on a world scale has never been so much confused, disoriented, and demobilized, as it has been today. The compromising legacy of the Old Left has proven to be devastating in a much longer run than it seemed it would be in a collapsing 1989, and New Social Movements from the last quarter of this century have really delivered much less than they had eagerly promised at their dawning days. Their famous political slogan “Think globally act locally” has been mostly expropriated and exploited by their political enemies. International capital has proven to be much more skillful in maneuvering through the labyrinths of the international economy and politics than its traditional enemy. To win means essentially to beat the enemy, in the enemy’s own domain. The new generation of transnational “self-protecting society” has been certainly coming into existence, but there is a great and difficult question. Will this generation be quick enough in its “natural” global development to face and counter-balance the rising power of global capitalist structure and class. Sporadic and spontaneous anti-authoritarian uprisings in different parts of the world, like those this year in Seattle, WA, USA, on the liberal end of the global capitalist spectrum, or in Belgrade, Serbia, FRY, on its fascist end, for example, deserve full admiration and support, but, at the same time, leave serious doubts about their final and common transnational effect and success.

On the other hand, the possibilities of the “self-protecting society” on a world scale have never been so conceivable, feasible, and viable, as they have been today. Needless to say, these possibilities have been ceaselessly coming from the ongoing and ever-changing reality, not from any dreaming fantasy (Wallerstein, 1998).

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According to certain quantitative and even the “hardest” experimental sciences, modern civilization has definitely entered into the “far-from-equilibrium state”, in which even the smallest inputs produce the largest output, or, to put it in a famous Ilya Prigogine’s metaphor, even the slightest move of a butterfly’s wing in Peking may eventually provoke an earthquake in Los Angeles (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984). In such a time, there is an immense and rising tension between the ongoing confusion, disorientation, and demobilization, on the one hand, and an increasing need and chance for global and human alternative, on the other hand. This tension calls for both hard political work (will and organization) and a creative thought and action. The tension has certainly been an exciting challenge, not only a heavy burden. Time of change is time of imagination: “It seems that democracy has again lost its face. This in itself is not so bad. Moreover, this could be the only ‘collateral gain’ from the damage done to democracy. (...) Democracy’s only chance lies in the fact that it has no more fixed place (...) Its meaning is freely floating again and can be caught only by our imagination.” (Buden, 1999)

References

Buden, Boris (1999). “The Official Bastard (ARKZIN)-Statement on the War in Yugoslavia”, Internet, April.

Fukujama, Frensis (1997). Kraj istorije i poslednji čovek (The End of History and the Last Man). Podgorica: CID.

Huntington, Samuel (1998). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. London: Touchstone.

Močnik, Rastko (1995). “Subject Supposed to Believe and Nation as a Zero Institution,” Conference ‘Otherhood and Nation’, Ljubljana, May 7-10.

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O’Donnell, Guillermo, Schmitter, Philippe, and Whitehead, Laurence, Editors (1986). Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy. Baltimore, Maryland and London: The John Hopkins University Press.

Polanyi, Karl (1957). The Great Transformation. New York and Toronto: Rinehart and Company, Inc.

Prigogine, Ilya and Stengers, Isabelle (1984). Order Out Of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue With Nature. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications, Inc; New York: Bantam Books, Inc.

Wallerstein, Immanuel (1995). After Liberalism. New York: The New Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel (1979). The Capitalist World-Economy. Cambridge: CUP; Paris: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.

Wallerstein, Immanuel (1998). Utopistics: Or Historical Choices of the Twenty-First Century. New York: The New Press.

Žižek, Slavoj (1999). “Against the Double Blackmail,” Internet, April.

175

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović The Post-Cold War Balkan Chaos And New Ideological Order December 2000

Introduction

Despite Karl Marx’s notorious political and ideological radicalism, there is no dilemma that the founder of the so-called scientific socialism was a spiritual child of modern time in general and modern social science in particular. His analytical paradigm was typically Newtonian, deterministic, unilinear, and progressivistic. Such a paradigm can be easily reconstructed from the wholeness of his numerous and dispersed works, but the most explicit and articulate announcement of the paradigm can be found in the Preface to the first edition of his Capital from 1867. Starting from the standard positivist premises of that time, he ended there with a clear progressivistic and developmentalist perspective. In that perspective, concluded Karl Marx in the Preface, England, the most developed country of the time, was only an image of the inevitable future development of all other, less developed countries, in the world (Marks, 1971: 17-18).

Great epistemological mutations and breaks regularly and finally come from concrete social change and not from pure intellectual sphere. The same happens to the modern social science and its paradigm. Great social cataclysms of our time, the First World War (1914-1918), and the Second World War (1939-1945) began radically to question and even refute the paradigm. The unfinished Post-Cold War Balkan chaos (1991-?) has only reminded us on this great and ongoing ontological and epistemological change. In a more concise way, one can say that the old Newtonian physics is being replaced by the new post-Newtonian science, determinism by probabilism, certainty by uncertainty, uni-linearity by multi-lin-

177 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror earity, progressivism by skepticism (Prigogine and Stengers, 1984). Ironically paraphrasing and reversing Karl Marx’s famous progressivistic declaration, one can argue that the Post-Cold War Balkan chaos has only been an image of a possible future development of England, USA, and other countries in the world, in which the chaotic tendency is less developed today. This is the deepest epistemological meaning and relevancy of the Post-Cold War Balkan chaos today.

Even more evident than this epistemological meaning and relevancy, however, has been the ideological meaning and relevancy of the Post-Cold War Balkan turmoil. Here we meet a seeming but stimulating paradox. On the one hand, the Balkans has occupied an unambiguously (semi)peripheral position in the modern European and world-system for at least last two centuries. On the other hand, this very (semi)peripheral region has clearly served as a central battlefield of the great and intense Post-Cold War ideological wars and as a breeding ground of the newly emerging Post- Cold War ideologies in the last ten years. This paradox is one of the main questions of this short paper. The paradox, however, has been only a seeming one. Namely, one should understand the label “(semi)periphery” in its full theoretical meaning. The (semi)periphery is the (semi)periphery of the system. Consequently, it serves the system in a very different ways. One of the ways is exactly the ideological way that has been described here.

Any serious i.e. non-ideological critique of ideology (needless to emphasize this paper has an ambition to be one of them) has to confront ideology with its respective theory and even more importantly with respective social and historical reality, not merely with some other competing ideology or ideologies. In other words, it should be a three-dimensional, not merely a one-dimensional critique. Since the Post-Cold War ideologies have been already cho- sen here as the main and privileged subject, and the Post-Cold War Balkan chaos as the main and privileged reality, what remains

178 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović now is to point out or at least to indicate the main and privileged theory of this paper. Far from imposing or even suggesting any new grand theory, which is in fact unattainable in the time of great intellectual fragmentation in which we live today, the paper is only generally and tentatively inclined to and based on an alternative and postmodern sociological and social theory. That theory is a world-system analysis created and developed by the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein.

Three Ideological Tendencies

The above subtitle should be taken extremely cautiously and con- ditionally. It has no ambition at all to enumerate and systematize any complete list or catalogue of the all dominant and alternative Post-Cold War ideologies. Anything like that would be simply impossible today. The grand Post-Cold War global ideological mutation is still in process. The old Cold War ideological pattern has been significantly exhausted and changed, but the new and stable Post-Cold War ideological structure has not fully come into existence yet. What we mostly may perceive today are only the first and unfinished contours of new ideological formations slowly arising from the mist of the Post-Cold War genesis. According to our starting hypothesis, the contours have mostly been developed in Post-Cold War Balkan politics. This is the concrete, dynamic, and complex framework, in which we may only speak about the three main ruling ideological tendencies, not about some crystal- lized and stabilized ideological formations.

The first of these ideologies has been, to use the prophetic words of the Great Russian thinker from the last century Vladimir Solovjov, the ideology of “zoological patriotism” (Solovjov, 1995: 205). It is very well known that this ideology has been responsible for deadly “ethnic cleansing” and for all other horrific brutalities of Post-Yugoslav wars that have sincerely shocked the so-called

179 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror civilized world. Initially, at the end of the 1980-s, this ideology was articulated and launched by some influential intellectuals, and only later, at the beginning of 1990-s, was it accepted and used by opportunistic politicians, Slobodan Milošević, Franjo Tuđman, and others. The case of Dobrica Ćosić, one of the most prominent Serbian novelists, and the first president of the FRY, was quite typical. At the very height of his office and influence, in the March of 1993, he explicitly and deterministically rationalized and even canonized the ongoing ethnic cleansing by arguing that Serbs, Croats, and Muslims “can not and do not want to live together” in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Ćosić, 1993). Given its historical roots and political practice, there is no dilemma that this ideology represents a very special kind of new peripheral post- Cold War and postcommunist fascism. What has regularly confused even some of the most experienced analysts, however, has been a very complex mixture of very different and sometimes even totally opposite ideological components existing and intertwining within this unique ideological configuration. Even more importantly, these components have been quite real and not just rhetorical. The three of them have been most evident and most confusing: collapsing and delegitimizing communism, reviving and attacking fascism, and coming but still too weak and unable liberalism. All these three components have been important and even necessary ingredients of this new and strange ideological formation, but the specific fascist component has been its main and dominating force. That is why we finally label this strange hybrid as a very special kind of fascism, and not just as a mixture of the three components (Popović, 1996: The Double Secret of Liberal Fascism, 164-167).

There is an inclination in the mainstream social sciences and ideologies of our time to view “ethnic cleansing” and other unspeak- able atrocities as endemic and even eternal attributes of the Balkans. To be quite honest, one must admit that these phenomena have recently escalated in the greatest degree exactly in this region. The deepest origins and functions of these phenomena and

180 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović processes, however, have been global, not regional, or local. That is why the Post-Cold War neofascist ideologies and mobilizations of the Balkans, born (or, to be more accurate and precise, re-born) amidst endless Post-Yugoslav pandemonium, have been the most important and fermenting agent for the whole spectrum of other Post-Cold War ideologies spread all over the world. A privileged place within this spectrum has been occupied by the “clash of civilizations” ideology (Huntington, 1993; Huntington, 1998), the second great global ideological tendency of our time. The connection between the Post-Cold War Balkan neofascism, on the one hand, and the Post-Cold War Western “clash of civilizations”, has been the most direct and obvious case of this global Post-Cold War ideological connection. Of course, there are many significant theoretical (epistemological) and practical (political) differences between the two that must not be neglected or underemphasized. Epistemologically, Balkan neofascist ideologies of our time represent just the most recent edition of an old, “blood and soil”, biological determinism, whereas Western “clash of civilizations” currently represents a much more refined kind of civilizational or cultural determinism. Politically, the responsibility of local neofascist ideologies for protracted war and destruction has been direct and primary, whereas the responsibility of global “clash of civilizations” ideology for the same has been only indirect and secondary. In spite of and together with these grave differences, however, there are some very important and even crucial similarities between the two. Epistemologically, both neofascist and civilizational interpretations represent just the two different kinds of the same and unique, analytically one-sided, simplistic, and unbalanced Post-Cold War ethno-determinism. Politically, both neofascist and civilizational ideologies of our time have been practically obscured, excused, and supported the ongoing destructive political process in the Balkans and elsewhere in the world, which has per- sisted behind the scenes. In other words, Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” and Slobodan Milošević’s or Franjo Tuđman’s “zoological patriotism” have been the two (central or Western and peripheral or Balkan) versions of the same, rather

181 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror than the two essentially different and alternative ideologies.

Ideological connection between the Post-Cold War Balkan fascism and the Post-Cold War Western liberalism, the third great global ideological tendency of our time, which was most explicitly elaborated by American philosopher Francis Fukuyama (Fukujama, 1997), has been less visible but no less present and real. In a complex and complicated but detectable way, Fukuyamian so-called pure liberalism inevitably reflects the insurmountable contradictions of late real-capitalism and historical system whose ideology this really articulates. This reflection is quite evident in case of the contradiction between globalist universalism and nationalist particularism. Great inconsistency is the least of the possible objec- tions to Francis Fukuyama concerning this matter. Thus, when Francis Fukuyama tends to legitimize the right of great Western powers to militarily intervene and protect oil fields located in the Third World countries, he clearly and firmly advocates a globalist and universalistic view. Conversely, when he tends to legitimize increasing economic polarization, deepening gap between rich and poor countries, and especially rigid monopolies of rich nations within the capitalist world-economy, he suddenly converts and becomes an advocate of particularistic “nations” and “cultures”. As has already been indicated, however, the deepest roots of this inconsistency have been of a quite systemic, not of an individual nature. Namely, systemically incapable to fulfill its own unrealistic ideological promises of economic welfare and liberal democracy for all people and nations on the globe, late real-capitalism so vulnerably and frequently retreats from its proclaimed universalism and falls into this or that type of cultural particuralism, closeness, and isolationism. In the worst cases, which are in fact not so rare, this systemic retreat and fall ends in this or that kind of latent or even manifest cultural racism i.e. fascism. Of course, the described connection and even partial intertwining between liberalism (universalism) and fascism (particularism), the two different but systemically linked ideologies of the late real-capitalism, is not an absolutely new discovery. It has been already detected and elu-

182 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović cidated by many social scientists and socialists of the twentieth century, among others and more recently by Immanuel Wallerstein (Wallerstein, 1987: Truth as Opiate: Rationality and Rationalization, 73-93). The Post-Cold War Balkan turmoil has only made this blasphemous connection be much more articulated and visible than earlier and elsewhere.

Four Common Characteristics

As it has been already indicated, the three ruling ideological tendencies of our time, the Post-Cold War peripheral fascism, the “clash of civilizations”, and the so-called pure liberalism, could be clearly defined as the three different but closely associated manifestations of the same and unique Post-Cold War “spirit of time”. Some elements common to the three ideologies that confirm their “spiritual” closeness have been already indicated as well. What follows now is their more explicit and elaborated articulation. In an unpretentious and provisionary systematization, they may be spelled out, focussed, and explained as the four common characteristics of the three ruling Post-Cold War ideological tendencies.

The first of them discovers and elucidates the deepest common substance and essence of these three ruling ideological tendencies. That is a new Post-Cold War social Darwinism. The new Post- Cold War social Darwinism is most easily recognizable in the words and deeds of the new Post-Cold War peripheral fascism i.e. “zoological patriotism”, but it can be easily recognized in the ideology of the “clash of civilizations” as well. It can not be found in all the very different streams of modern and postmodern liberal ideology, but it can be certainly identified as a hidden substance in the mainstream so-called pure liberalism of Francis Fukuyama and his numerous and powerful followers. Out of a real economic and social context of the Post-Cold War world, even the famous liberal credo, according to which everybody is responsible for his own

183 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror happiness, necessarily transforms and becomes just a fig-leaf of new social Darwinist stratification of wealth and power on a world scale. Not the triumph of liberalism, as it appears on the surface, but the triumph of new social Darwinism has been the most condensed summary of the overall Post-Cold War ideological transformation.

The second common element of the three ruling Post-Cold War ideologies more closely describes their common ideological mechanism: one-sided and distorted ethnic over-determinism. Ideology as such is usually based on the mechanism of this or that kind of half-truth i.e. one-sided and distorted picture of reality, and not on the mechanism of pure fabrication and lie. During the second half of the XX century, it used to be this or that kind of economic or political over-determinism. After the Cold War it has become this or that kind of ethnic over-determinism, and this has been the main ideological shift in the Post-Cold War time. One-sided, unbalanced, and distorted ethnic over-determinism has been most clearly visible in the case of Balkan peripheral fascism and in the case of Western centered “clash of civilizations”, but it exists in Fukuyamian defensive, closed, and xenophobic liberalism as well.

The third common element describes what is actually the most important here, and that is the practical social function of all ideologies. This is the function of the hiding, obscuring, distorting, and thus practically contributing to the overall production and reproduction of the new Post-Cold War reality. This is a famous function of ideology as a dark chamber or camera obscura of reality. This reality has been a complex interplay of historical, economic, social, political, cultural, and international factors at least. If any of these important factors should be singled out at all, than it should probably be the political factor, or, to be more precise, the demons of power or “diabolical powers”, as long ago formulated by Max Weber. Unlike all other factors, which have been mostly passive in their nature, this factor has been the only one that has been active and activating in its operation. Nevertheless,

184 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović this factor has been exactly the one that has been systematically hidden, obscured, and distorted by the all three of the ruling Post- Cold War ideologies. In the new peripheral fascism, it has been totally and entirely hidden behind the overreaching mythology of nature, biology, “blood and soil”. In the new-old “clash of civilizations”, it has been largely under-emphasized, while culture and civilization have been simultaneously and proportionally over- emphasized. Finally, in the Fukuyamian so-called pure liberalism, it has been absorbed by too abstract a thymos i.e. struggle for recognition. In this last case, the ideologization, which is to say hiding and distorting of the reality of international capitalist power, has ultimately led its master, Francis Fukuyama, to such an unrealistic conclusion as war on monotony.

The fourth common component reveals the deepest epistemological root of distorted or false social consciousness of the three Post- Cold War ideologies. That rotten root lies in the nation-state as the main unit of social analysis. Due to the ongoing process of exponential growth of globalization in all relevant areas of contemporary social life, however, the main unit of social action and analysis has not been the nation-state any longer, but has irreversibly become the global or world-system. Ignoring this crucial historical change and retaining the nation-state as the main unit of analysis, the three ruling Post-Cold War ideologies necessarily degenerate into different versions and forms of theoretical distortion or fallacy. In the biological version and form of ethnic over-determinism, this theoretical degeneration is quite transparent, but it anyway exists deeply anchored and modified in its cultural or civilizational version and form and in the so-called ‘pure’ liberalism as well. In fact, the “civilization” of Samuel Huntington and the “liberal democracy” of Francis Fukuyama only generalize the nation-state, “civilization” embracing the group of nation-states, and “liberal democracy” embracing Western nations alone.

How the overall picture of reality may be deeply conditioned and affected by the two different units of analysis is most clearly seen

185 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror in the two respective interpretations of the Post-Cold War Balkan turmoil. The three ruling Post-Cold War ideologies treat this turmoil and the Balkans in general not as a part of the modern world, but as an ethnic or cultural endemic phenomenon. Using the nation-state as the main unit of analysis, they are simply doomed to interpret the turmoil as an unavoidable effect and part of some specific nation, culture, or civilization. Conversely, the world-system analysis treats the Balkans and its current turmoil as a very specific but in any case integral part of the modern world-system. Using world-system as the main unit of analysis, it interprets the Post-Cold War Balkan chaos as a possible beginning or even paradigm of the coming and nascent postmodern world. In the succeeding two sections, this very general interpretation, based on the world-system and not on the nation-state as the main unit of analysis, will be more concretely developed on the two, regional and international levels, as the two principal levels of the analysis. At the same time, the process of the elucidation of the dark cham- bers of the ruling Post-Cold War ideologies will be proceeded and advanced now more by confronting these ideologies with respective social and political realities than by observing and analyzing these ideologies by themselves.

Perverse Nationalistic Inter-Dependence

Nation-state encapsulation has been the deepest cause and mechanism of destruction and self-destruction in the Balkans after the Cold War. Nationalistic closeness, xenophobia, and blindness, coming from this encapsulation, have totally reversed the glorious liberal credo of Adam Smith. Pursuing national goals and interests in an entirely isolationist, shortsighted, and aggressive manner, blind nationalists of all Post-Yugoslav states have finally and heavily damaged their own nations. Given the overall disaster and stupidity of the pattern, Vladimir Solovjov’s prophetic description “zoological patriotism” may really offend only animals. When

186 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović some of these “patriots”, like Vojislav Koštunica, newly elected president of FRY, for example, try today to defend themselves, saying that they have been just “normal nationalists” or “patriots” who only love their own countries and nations, we may understand their need for self-defense. However, we can not buy their argument. The reason for this is quite simple and transparent. To be a real patriot in a time of aggressive, stupid, and self-destructive nationalism, means not to compete with such nationalism, as Vojislav Koštunica and other self-perceived and self-proclaimed “normal nationalists” or “patriots” used to do. Quite conversely, it means to fight against the pattern from the standpoint of an alternative, anti-nationalistic political platform.

Despite its literal and deceitful meaning, “zoological patriotism” has nothing to do with pure zoology or nature. On the contrary, it has been entirely fabricated from the ever-transforming elements of society and politics. The main components of the new nationalistic order had been already built in the last phase of old communist regimes long before the revolution of 1989 declaration of change. Old communist ideology, which was so noisily crushed in 1989, was just a snakeskin. Evolving but eternal demons of power have survived and raised from the very ruins and dust of old regimes. A new survivalist hybrid has been built from the mixture of the old power apparatus and new nationalist ideology. On the other hand, some kind of perverse inter-dependence among these newly established aggressive nationalistic regimes has been crucial for their long lasting existence and maintenance. This interdependence has been a kind of prolonged and modified Cold War pattern after the Cold War. It has been realized through a pathological system of their mutual and simultaneous antagonism and support. In a word, these regimes have been necessary foes to each other. Little wonder then the Greater Croatian regime of Franjo Tuđman in Croatia and Greater Serbian regime of Slobodan Milošević in Serbia, two and, in many essential respects twin regimes, have collapsed in one and the same year.

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Deflection strategy additionally elucidates the described interdependence of the regimes. This has been a strategy of permanent and systemic deflection of all internal social and political pressures toward external states and territories. Such a strategy could work as long as the regimes had enough external states and territories at their disposal. As soon as they lost such states and territories, however, they no longer were able to employ the strategy, and due to this crucial fact, they began to fade away. The trajectory of the rise and fall of Slobodan Milošević’s regime in Serbia most clearly and paradigmatically confirms this fundamental cor- relation. Instead of being a responsible political actor, peacefully and legally protecting legitimate rights of Serbs living outside Serbia, this regime was a big political parasite, manipulating their rising ethnic tensions and fears, and provoking four ethnic wars in only one decade. Through all this time, Serbs outside Serbia were treated by the regime in an extremely instrumental, machiavellian, and cynical way, as a reservoir of ethnic fuel for the regime’s and of course not for the people’s political survival. Therefore, not until all external territories were lost, Serbia was ready and capable to face itself, Serbian opposition, and people to confront its own dictatorial regime. It was the logic connecting and explaining the relationship between the war lost in Kosovo in June 1999 and the “two hours revolution” which exploded in Belgrade in October 2000. The “two hours revolution” was like a miracle, but not a miracle in itself. In any event, the reservoir of Greater Serbian ethnic fuel, political elite’s deflection strategy, and the endless nationalistic game has not yet been exhausted. Montenegro has remained the last external territory at disposal. Given the intense Serbian minority in Montenegro, Greater Serbian legacy and aspiration in Serbia, and the notoriously shortsighted realpolitik that has been still predominant in the so-called international community, one can only imagine how the last round of this perverse and aggressive nationalistic game could look like in the near future.

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Global Resonance and Significance

In normal times, the (semi)periphery of the world system regularly plays a passive and less significant role. In turbulent times, however, this zone of the system may temporarily obtain somewhat more active if not more significant and central role. This is exactly what has been happening to the Balkans in the last ten to fifteen years. Nevertheless, and contrary to what numerous and messianic local nationalists sincerely and fiercely believe, the change has been more in the way in which the region has played its old (semi)peripheral role than the change of the role itself. After all, it seems today that the Balkans had already passed through this more agile but transitory phase and that it has been returning to its old and passive track. Of course, this does not mean that this temporary change has no any wider i.e. world-systemic meaning. On the contrary, the change has its subtle but undeniable global resonance and significance. The last section of this paper deals with this resonance and significance; discussing both its negative or destructive and its positive or constructive side.

The negative or destructive side of the resonance and significance is very well known although not so well understood. Even some official documents of the dominant international, which is to say Western power, and military apparatus recognized the highly instrumental role that the Balkans played in the process of an early adaptation and evolution of these apparatus in the Post-Cold War era. “The NATO-led operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Joint Endeavor, is NATO’s first-ever ground force operation, its first- ever deployment ‘out of area’, and its first-ever joint operation with NATO’s Partnership for Peace partners and other non-NATO countries. It demonstrates that the Alliance is adapting its forces and policies to the requirements of the Post-Cold War World, while continuing to provide collective security and defense for all Allies.” (NATO, 1997) This extremely instrumental role of the Balkans became even more apparent during the NATO bombardment of Serbia and Montenegro in 1999. In a word, the Balkan

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(semi)periphery has been used as a testing ground for changing and reforming the old Cold War power and military infrastructure of the center in the new Post-Cold War era.

An extremely complex and dynamic relationship among major political actors and powers, local, regional, and global as well, which has been anchored at the very bottom of this heavy and turbulent process of adaptation, has become a matter of great dispute and confusion. Special attention and confusion has arisen around the question of the real relationship between Slobodan Milošević and the West in this process. A strange pattern of the relationship, full of sudden changes, inconsistencies, and obscurities, developing through several distinct phases of friendly cooperation and antagonistic confrontation, provokes two typical school of thinking: the error school and the conspiracy school. While partly elucidating some important aspects of this complex relationship, both of these two schools miss the essence of the relationship, and that is a quasi-biological or quasi-chemical adaptation, which surely contains but simultaneously exceeds certain elements of both error and conspiracy. Here again we meet necessary foes as the old Cold War legacy and pattern in the new Post-Cold War era, only this time on a world level. What aggressive nationalists, most notoriously Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman, used to be to each other on the regional level, Slobodan Milošević and other Balkan dictators and the West have been to each other on the world level. This is the deepest secret of the unexpected and “unholy alliance” between Western liberals and Serbian and other Balkan fascists, which has been so strongly emphasized by one lucid Slovenian analyst (Mastnak, 1996: 69).

The positive or constructive side of the resonance and significance is less well known and acknowledged though not less interesting and important. Certainly, there are many good reasons for deep and serious skepticism about man’s general ability to learn from history. Still this skepticism must not be allowed to turn out into a total amnesia or paralysis. Our minimal civic and professional

190 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović duty is to try to learn something from experience, at least. This is how the horrors of Post-Yugoslav wars may be eventually transformed into the lessons for Europe and the world. From a much longer list of such lessons, here will be spelled out and sketched only two of the most important of them.

The first lesson for Europe and the world, which may be drawn from the Post-Cold War Balkan turmoil, warns against the old geopolitics and its anachronistic distinction between internationally relevant and internationally irrelevant regions or states. Actually, the Post-Cold War Balkan experience has clearly demonstrated that there is no region or state in the contemporary world, which is internationally irrelevant or insignificant in the old way. This major international and geopolitical change has directly come from the greatest systemic change of our time, i.e. from the exponential rise of the density, sensitivity, and vulnerability of the modern ecological, economic, and political world-system that occurred in the second half of the XX century. Due to this rise, even the Balkans, which used to be the region of secondary importance during the whole Cold War time, has become the region of prime international importance in only a couple of years of the new Post-Cold War era (Popović, 1996: 152-155). Moreover, the exponential rise of the density, sensitivity, and vulnerability of the modern ecological, economic, and political world-system has radically questioned the very concepts and realities of the center, periphery, and semi-periphery of the system, and, of course, the very existence of the system as a whole. The Post-Cold War Balkan crisis has dramatically revealed how fatally inadequate and dangerous any prolonged and blind conservatism regarding this matter could be. No wonder globalization of the governance, effectiveness, and responsibilities has become an urgent need and leading slogan of the day (Giddens, 2000).

The second lesson summarizes the negative Post-Cold War Balkan experience and suggests a possible and desirable general ideological quality, content, and direction of globalization. Namely, the

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Post-Cold War Balkan experience has convincingly discredited any kind of ideological, intellectual, and spiritual dogmatism or fundamentalism. Both ethnic and liberal fundamentalism has proven to be just a facade hiding and supporting different kinds of rigid and dangerous systems of domination developed on local and world levels. Instead of closed, exclusive, and aggressive ideological worlds of “zoological patriotism”, “clash of civilizations”, and “fundamentalist liberalism”, there is a crying need for a more eclectic and pragmatic ideological and intellectual synthesis today. We have really and definitely entered the age and domain of the “third way” (Giddens, 2000), “after liberalism” (Wallerstein, 1995), or “post-liberalism” (Grej, 1999), the age and domain of a new great global convergence.

References

Ćosić, Dobrica (1993). Borba, March 12.

Fukujama, Frensis (1997). Kraj istorije i poslednji čovek [Fukuyama, Francis: The End of History and the Last Man]. Podgorica: CID.

Giddens, Anthony (2000). The Third Way and its Critics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Grej, Džon (1999). Liberalizam [Gray, John: Liberalism]. Podgorica: CID.

Huntington, Samuel P. (1993). “The Clash of Civilizations?”, Foreign Affairs, Volume 72, Number 3, pp. 22-49.

Huntington, Samuel P. (1998). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. London: Touchstone.

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Marks, Karl (1971). Kapital [Marx, Karl: Capital]. Beograd: BIGZ.

Mastnak, Tomaž (1996). “Fascists, Liberals, and Anti- Nationalism,” in R. Capland and J. Faffer, editors, Europe’s New Nationalism. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 59- 74.

NATO (1997). “NATO’s Role in Peacekeeping in the Former Yugoslavia,” NATO Fact Sheet No. 4, Bilten ambasade SAD u Beogradu, Belgrade, March 19, No. 165.

Popović, Milan (1996). Posle hladnog rata [After the Cold War]. Bar: Kulturni centar.

Prigogine, Ilya and Stengers, Isabelle (1984). Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. Colorado: Shambhala Publications; New York: Bantam Books.

Solovjov, Vladimir (1995). Rusko nacionalno pitanje [Russian National Question]. Podgorica: CID.

Wallerstein, Immanuel (1995). After Liberalism. New York: The New Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel (1987). Historical Capitalism. London: Verso.

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Appendices

Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Review

A recent book of Prof. Milan Popović, this time in English, represents a highly sophisticated synthesis of author's previous work dealing with the issue of Yugoslav crisis, with particular references to the Republic of Montenegro in the last decade. As in his previous works, applying the modern world-system sociology approach, the author uncovers real and very deep sources and causes of the Yugoslav crisis. Due to the before mentioned multidisciplinary approach, Popović offers a little bit different, more comprehensive and theoretical and methodological better founded overview on the dissolution of Former Yugoslavia and atrocities that followed it.

With multidisciplinary methods of various natural sciences and humanities, the author studies all phenomena and processes in three dimensions: the global world system aspect, the regional level, and the local (Montenegrin) one. Working on this approach, the author has been analyzing, understanding and demystifying numerous and new post Cold War phenomena, processes and ideologies having in mind the process of dissolution of Former Yugoslavia and consequent political turmoils. In his high intellectual analysis, Popović includes different and mutually co-related aspects of this phenomena and processes: political, legal, sociological, psychological, anthropological and others, giving respective readers very deep and comprehensive overview of the above mentioned. In that context he is particularly stressing the responsibility of so-called International Community i.e. "Real Policy of Great Powers" for events and corresponding atrocities in Former Yugoslavia.

The book consists of two parts - Part One is dedicated to short, but content full essays, and Part Two is composed of more extensive academic articles.

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All this is related to three different time-spans - ten post-Yugoslav years 1991-2001; four Montenegrin years 1997-2001, and the last, 2000-2001, Montenegrin year. Concerning the space aspect, analyses include World, the Balkans (Ex Yugoslavia) and Montenegro.

The most important reason for publishing and reading the book is a very simple fact that this book is the first one written in English, and based on modern interdisciplinary social theory, which gives not only to intellectuals, but also to ordinary people, very comprehensive explanations of historical roots, current manifestations, as well as future perspective of different political, constitutional, international, cultural, and psychological aspects of deep and prolonged crisis in Montenegro.

By Nebojša B. Vučinić Director of Human Rights Centre of University of Montenegro

A few specific qualities are connected to Milan Popović's new book "Montenegrin Mirror" published in English. Before all, it is about a new approach to the reader. In addition to its printed edition, the book is also available in electronic form on the Internet. In that regard, the author stayed consistent to himself, because he, in his already rich opus, at different times and in different ways, showed his readiness to change the form in his expression, if he considered that necessary for reasons of methodology, style, or topic. Although one of those, as a scientist and pedagogue, who have stayed faithful to printed expression of the written word and to irreplaceable value of printed books and newspapers, this time Popović decided to present his book to the readers in a new, mentioned technique, it could be said, with no overstating, the new alphabet of the 21st century - electronic alphabet. It seems to us that the author did it, as in some previous situations, with no prejudices and with no fear of the new form.

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If we add that the book is published in English, it is clear that the author has been already aware that he is addressing only that part of professional and interested public that is able to communicate in accordance with the international standard.

By internal structure, the book is, as some previous author's editions, the collection of political essays, articles and analyses, published in the last two years. However, unlike earlier Popović's books of this kind, which beside methodological coherence were characterised by various topics, this book is, with no exception, focused on only one topic: Montenegrin state issue. This key question of the Montenegrin politics in the last decade is viewed from many angles by Milan Popović who is trying to solve it by breaking it down, to the greatest extent possible, to its integral and not always simple, visible, and understandable elements. That way, in different essays and articles united on a spot, there is a deep analysis of the key actors of the domestic political scene, the role of the leading countries in the international community, as well as the influence of one more important, at the same time both external and internal factor - Serbia, both during and after Milosević. It is probably not necessary to remind those following author's work for a long time, that the so called School of World System is a basis of his approach and analysis, and that he stayed faithful to that approach in this book. Nevertheless, even for those who do not belong to that school of thinking or rather have a critical attitude to it (which is the case with the author of these lines), the dis- tance is not significant when reading the book "Montenegrin Mirror". The interest of the topic and seriousness of its treatment are in the limelight, and that is the point the reader is most interested in.

Although we got used to Milan Popović's high standards, it seems to us that the book deserves additional attention primarily for the reason of the topic it is dealing with. There is a mass of books on domestic scene with historic content and a series of political texts on the issue of constitutional legal status of Montenegro. With

199 Milan Popović Montenegrin Mirror some exceptions, they can hardly conceal a commercial and pretty superficial content. Unlike the main forms, Milan Popović approached the topic with modern sensibility and with the same conceptual and analytical apparatus. Thanks to that, interested foreign readers (to whom the book, being in English, is primarily intended for) will find here the approach and analytical dictionary that they can understand, problems that are based on comparative experience that can be understood and recognized, critical opinion that, even if unacceptable, they can normally communicate with. If we add that it is one of the first books, if not the first book by a Montenegrin author in a foreign language, which treats one of the probably most difficult and most complex issues of the Montenegrin politics today in a very systematic way, then its value is doubtless.

In one word, for all interested in the status of the smallest country in the Balkans, be it the experts or interested public, "Montenegrin mirror" is the book which can only help it be better understood.

By Srđan Darmanović Director of Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Podgorica

200 Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Acknowledgments

Twelve of the nineteen texts from this book have been originally and specially written for and published on the web-site of the Podgorica Nansen Dialogue Center, which is the publisher of this book as well, from August 2000 to July 2001. The first text of the book was originally and specially written for and published on the web-site of the Pittsburgh Law School during the NATO campaign in 1999. This text serves as a kind of introduction to Part One of the book. The texts from the Part Two of the book are more extensive and classical articles dealing more with the post-Yugoslav background than with Montenegro directly. Some of these texts have already been published, but others were published here for the first time. In any case, the following are the full details of all texts published or republished in this book.

“Montenegrin Alternative: Transition, Identity, State,” http://www.iurist.law.pitt.edu/kosovo.htm, June 4, 1999. This one together with the following six texts titled as “Montenegro 1999- 2001: Road To Independence” were republished in the publication The Future Of Montenegro, Briefing package, Conference on Montenegro, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., February 5, 2001, pp. 1-12.

“Understanding Neopatriarchy,” http://www.ndcmn.org, August 2000.

“Before The Storm,” http://www.ndcmn.org, September 2000.

“After The Storm,” http://www.ndcmn.org, October 2000.

“Democratic FRY: Mission Improbable,” http://www.ndcmn.org, November 2000.

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“The Last Balkan Triangle: Montenegrin Referendum, New Serbian Nationalism, And International Supervision,” http://www.ndcmn.org, December 2000.

“Between East And West: Two Ideas Of Nation-State,” http://www.ndcmn.org, January 2001.

“Europe versus Europe,” http://www.ndcmn.org, February 2001.

“New Miscalculation,” http://www.ndcmn.org, March 2001.

“Dances With Wolves,” http://www.ndcmn.org, April 2001.

“Shocking Connection,” http://www.ndcmn.org, May 2001.

“Curse Of Involvement,” http://www.ndcmn.org, June 2001.

“Imagining Alternative,” http://www.ndcmn.org, July 2001.

“Yugoslav Disintegration In A World-System Perspective,” Research Working Paper, Fernand Braudel Center, SUNY, Binghamton, NY, US, June 1992.

“After The Collapse,” Montenegro Journal of Foreign Policy, Volume 3, No. 1-2, 1998, pp. 29-45.

Fatić, Aleksandar and Popović, Milan, co-authors, “NATO expansion and Balkan testing ground,” Peace and Security, The International Institute for Peace, Vienna, Austria, research quarter- ly, Vol XXXI, 1999, September, pp. 36-42.

Medojević, Nebojša and Popović, Milan, co-authors, “Unholy Alliance,” Center for Transition, Podgorica, January 19, 2001.

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“A Tadpole Transition and Its Alternatives: A Draft for an Understanding of the Ideology and Epistemology of Postcommunist Change,” Paper presented at the workshop The Concept of Transition, Zagreb, April 22-23, 2000.

“The post-Cold War Balkan Chaos and New Ideological Order,” in O. Savić and D. Bijelić, editors, The Balkans as a Metaphor: Between Globalization and Fragmentation, MIT Press, forthcom- ing.

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Montenegrin Mirror Milan Popović Author

Milan M. Popović Curriculum Vitae and Bibliography

Born: Andrijevica, Montenegro, July 11, 1955.

Education: B.A, Law School Titograd, University of Montenegro, 1977; MA (Interests and Politics in Contemporary Yugoslav Society), Law School, University of Belgrade, 1983; Ph.D. (Immanuel Wallerstein’s World-Systems Analysis), Law School, University of Belgrade, 1991.

Academic Posts: Teaching Fellow (1978-91), Assistant Professor- Docent (1991-96), Associate Professor (1996-2001), Full Professor (2001-) of Comparative Political Systems and Political Sociology, Law School Podgorica, and of Political System, School of Economy Podgorica, University of Montenegro. Acting Director of the Center for International Studies of the University of Montenegro (2001-).

Professional and Related Public Activities: Member, Academia Dioclitiana Scientiarum et Artium (DANU), 1999-; Member, Committee for Science and Language, Matica Crnogorska, 1994-; Member of Board, Association for Foreign Policy Research (Kotor, Montenegro), 1995-99; Member of Board, Soros- Yugoslavia Foundation, 1991-93; Member, Yugoslav Association of Political Science, 1978-; Member of Board, Verona Forum, International Non-Governmental Organization for Peace and Reconciliation on the Territory of Former Yugoslavia, Brussels, 1996-99; Member, Center for Democracy and Human Rights (CEDEM), Podgorica, Montenegro, 1997-; Member of Council, Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSID), Belgrade,

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1998-; Member, International Forum Bosnia, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1998-

Honors, Fellowships, and Lectureships: John Marshall Research Fellow, Visiting Research Associate at the Fernand Braudel Center, SUNY, Binghamton, NY, USA, 1991-93; British Council Research Fellow, University of Sussex, Brighton, U.K., 1988-89; Visiting Lecturer, Political Economy of Planning and Economic Reform in Russia and Eastern Europe, Brighton Polytechnic, University of Sussex, Brighton, U.K., Spring 1989.

Editorial Boards: Journal Southeast European Politics, CEU, Budapest, 2000-; journal Doclea, Podgorica, 2000-; Series editor, Kairos, Publishing Center (CID), Podgorica, 1995-; Montenegro Journal of Foreign Policy, Kotor, 1995-99; journal Ideje, Belgrade, 1988-91; journal Ovdje, Titograd, 1986-89; journal Praksa, Titograd, 1984-89; Editor, Research, Documentary, and Publishing Center (CIDID), Belgrade, series on young generation and new social movements, 1985-89.

Bibliography: Nine books (Political Economy and Politics, 1985; Dilemmas of Political Pluralism, 1988; Rhythm of the World: Immanuel Wallerstein’s World-System Analysis, 1995; Jargon of the Periphery: Balkan Postmodernity 1, 1994; After the Cold War: Balkan Postmodernity 2, 1996; Political Apartheid: Balkan Postmodernity 3, 1997; Contemporary Political Systems, university textbook, co-authors Pavle Jovanović, Nenad Dimitrijević, and Milan Popović, 1998; Under Facade, http://www.medijaklub.cg.yu, 2000; Montenegrin Alternative: Balkan Postmodernity 4, 2000), and a host of academic articles, essays, and reviews (dealing with the post-Cold War Balkan crisis, local, national and international power apparatus, and the modern world-system), published in distinguished national and international journals and publications.

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Montenegrin Mirror Polity in Turmoil (1991-2001)

Part One Essays Montenegrin Alternative Understanding Neopatriarchy Before The Storm After The Storm Democratic FRY Mission Improbable The Last Balkan Triangle Two Ideas Of Nation-State Europe versus Europe New Miscalculation Dances With Wolves Shocking Connection Curse Of Involvement Imagining Alternative

Part Two Articles Yugoslav Disintegration After The Collapse Balkan Testing Ground Unholy Alliance Tadpole Transition New Ideological Order