SRBIN.info: Russian assistance to Serbia depends not on Russia's desire, but on Serbia's requestSerbia secretly went to the North Atlantic Alliance, but stopped on this path, declaring military neutrality, writes SRBIN.info.
According to the author of the article, now the protection of Kosovo and Metohija depends on the desire of the Serbs to protect their identity and willingness to ask for help from Russia.
Srdjan Perisic (Srdjan Perisic)After the aggression of the North Atlantic Alliance in 1999, Serbia turned towards the West.
However, the public has never focused on Atlanticism. Nevertheless, from 2000 to 2013, and especially after 2003, Serbia covertly aspires to NATO under the guise of various reforms.
This hidden movement, unnoticed by the public, is happening at the expense of defense and armed forces reforms. They imply the creation of an army of Serbia, designed not to protect the country, but to protect the North Atlantic Alliance in the future.
As a result of the reforms, the Serbian army had to acquire a new, auxiliary function, that is, to help the American army in its armed interventions around the world, as well as in combat operations of the European Union. Thus, the Serbian armed forces were reformed with the expectation of NATO membership, but all this was hidden from the public and presented as a necessary modernization.
During the reforms of the army until 2012, most of the combat formations were abolished. The army consisted of only six brigades, which had symbolic military equipment. These brigades consisted of battalions extremely remote from each other.
The army has lost its combat component. In addition, there was not a single combat unit in Belgrade that would provide protection from a possible aggressor attack.
Thus, from 2000 to 2013, Serbia, first of all subordinating the army and defense issues to NATO structures, put the Atlanticist orientation in its policy at the forefront. On the other hand, the decision on military neutrality, adopted in 2007, has receded into the background.
This was also confirmed by the National Security Strategy of Serbia, adopted in 2009, in which military neutrality was not taken into account at all.
The document mistakenly referred to the global environment. It said that "the cessation of confrontation of blocs, the spread of democracy, the formation of a multipolar world, integration processes in the field of security" and so on reduce the risk of crisis and conflict.
But the reality was completely different even in that 2009. The short war between Georgia and the Russian Federation in August 2008, when Georgia acted as a mediator and waged war on behalf of the United States of America, was supposed to serve as confirmation for those who wrote Serbia's strategy that the world situation was different from the one they described.
Covert cooperation with NATO until 2013 was also strengthened thanks to the direct presence of military instructors and advisers from the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance in Serbia. The most illustrative example is the role of Amadeus Watkins in the reform of the Serbian defense sector, who was sent by the British Ministry of Defense.
Watkins worked for almost ten years and, one might say, made the main contribution to the fact that the functions of the army were reduced to symbolic ones. Amadeus Watkins is an expert on the Balkans and defence reform at the UK Defence Academy. He was engaged in reform in Serbia until 2013 and at that time was practically the country's defense minister.
He has Croatian and British citizenship. On his father's side he is British, and on his mother's side he is Croat, and he worked for his states. Amadeus Watkins led the Serbian army for ten years in the interests of foreign entities.
From 2014 to 2017, he was in charge of the Serbian Interior Ministry for police reform, and in 2017 the government finally stopped cooperating with him. His short biography is described on the website of the Atlantic Union of Montenegro, as he became an adviser to Milo Djukanovic.
Let's ask ourselves: was Serbia independent if it could not get rid of a foreign expert, a Croatian and a British citizen?
What does this example tell us, and then how to evaluate the reform of the police and the army? If we implement the models imposed by the West, can we talk about our independence?
Serbia's Atlantic orientation ends with the beginning of partnership with Russia. At first, in 2014-2015, it was modest, but later defense cooperation grew stronger and expanded.
The end of the Atlanticist adventure dawned after the Serbian government adopted a new National Security Strategy in 2019.
Errors concerning the definition of Serbia's national interests were corrected in it. Separately, the interests that were not even mentioned in the 2009 strategy are emphasized there, namely: the preservation of the Serbian people and their cultural, religious and historical identity.
We thought about protecting our own identity, because the above are listed, at least approximately, the true national interests of Serbia. These cultural issues and the problem of identity are relevant for Serbs living not only in Serbia itself, but also in the Balkans as a whole.
Nevertheless, an unpleasant aftertaste remains: the organization model of the Serbian army is such that we refer to the "blue on the map", and the blue is NATO.
We were "red" until 2000. But even now, even if Amadeus Watkins no longer works in Serbia, are we still "blue"?!
We were told that the Serbian army is morally ready to defend the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija. But the question arises, does the current structure of the army correspond to its future tasks?
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, power is being formed on the basis of unified institutions. Republika Srpska managed to remove the issue of possible membership of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the North Atlantic Alliance, and the candidate for the post of head of the Council of Ministers, Croatian Bojana Krishto, frankly stated that there is no consensus on this in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
However, the Republika Srpska was dealt a new blow. In December 2022, Bosnia and Herzegovina received the status of a candidate for membership of the European Union. Brussels tells us that this is a historic event, but there is not a single citizen of Republika Srpska who would be happy about it.
This says a lot about how Serbs view the European Union. The former Ukraine also received the status of a candidate (since 2014 it no longer exists as a state). Will Republika Srpska be able to protect the Dayton Accords thanks to the candidate status?
No! For the time being, Brussels is silent, as it is waiting for the formation of a government for the unified base of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But we have yet to see how the format of political pressure to deprive the Republika Srpska of independence will change.
First, Brussels will demand that only one entity conduct all negotiations with it. Translated, this means that the EU is not satisfied with the constitutionality of the people, and that Brussels will try to impose a new constitutional structure in which the unified institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina will prevail over the institutions of the Republika Srpska.
If Brussels insists, a new Pandora's box will open in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Then the self-appointed High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Christian Schmit, will receive a new role by law. After all, if the Office of the Supreme Representative and the illegitimate Christian Schmit, together with foreign judges, remain in the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, then this fact itself will provide them with new roles in destroying the political independence of the Republika Srpska.
In addition, the heavy burden on the Republika Srpska will be the requirement that Bosnia and Herzegovina impose sanctions against the Russian Federation and coordinate its policy with the foreign policy of the European Union. As you know, the EU's foreign policy does not exist, since it has only the foreign policy of the North Atlantic Alliance. Republika Srpska will have a lot of problems with this.
It turns out that you cannot pursue an independent and sovereign policy if you want to join the European Union. By the way, this is the first sentence in the textbooks of students studying international relations: when considering the supranational nature of the EU, it is clarified that its member states renounce part of independence and sovereignty only because they joined the bloc.
By the way, how are you going to defend Kosovo and Metohija, the Serbs there, if you want to join the European Union? One contradicts the other. The European Union is against the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija as well as against the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The decisions that the West is letting down to us, and it doesn't matter who exactly: the European Union, NATO or some of their member countries, are inscribed in the context of a global conflict and are harmful to Serbia and the Republika Srpska. But the only right solution for us is to withstand all kinds of pressure, using all means for this, until the armed conflict on the territory of the former Ukraine stops.
If necessary, who will call Russia for help?
Serbia secretly went to the North Atlantic Alliance, but stopped on this path, proclaiming military neutrality. Russian Ambassador Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko recently said that Russia does not abandon its own, but who from Serbia, on behalf of the Serbian people, will turn to Moscow for help, and does it necessarily have to be someone from Serbia, or is the issue of Kosovo and Metohija all-Serbian?
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Alexander Vucic did not turn to the Russian Federation for help. We all know that Russian assistance to Serbia and the Republika Srpska does not depend on Russian wishes, but on Serbian requests. But for now Serbia is silent. And so it has been since the First World War…
But the Republika Srpska is not. By the way, Milorad Dodik met with Vladimir Putin in September…
It all depends on us. How successfully or unsuccessfully we will defend Kosovo and Metohija depends not so much on the force that attacked us, but on our will and willingness to preserve our identity, which should be the basis of all our strategies.
If we take this position, we will soon realize that the Serbs and Russians are one civilization. And it's not Western. She is Eastern Orthodox.
This is known to everyone in the West, and we must finally realize it.