Montenegro is under attack and needs American help

The last time Montenegro appeared in the US press President Donald Trump was shoving its Prime Minister out of his way during the Summit at which the former Yugoslav republic joined NATO in 2017. Now Montenegro’s government, which came to power last September, is shoving aside NATO in favor of improved relations with Serbia and Russia.

Until last fall, Montenegro had been governed for most of the last 30 years by Milo Djukanovic, either as President or Prime Minister. Still in the presidency, he has been a determined advocate of Montenegro’s independence, achieved in 2006, and its affiliation with the US and Europe. Montenegro has become a front-runner in the Western Balkan regatta for European Union membership.

Djukanovic’s multiethnic political coalition lost the parliamentary election last August by one seat to a coalition whose core support comes from people who resisted Montenegrin independence from Serbia and identify not as Montenegrin but as Serb. This occurred after months of raucous street demonstrations supported by the Serbian Orthodox Church, Serbia, and Russia, which conducted an intense disinformation campaign on conventional and social media.

The sponsors are getting their payback.

An effort to regularize the status of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its property in Montenegro has been dropped. Security officials have been replaced with people close to Russia. The conviction of two politicians involved in the Russian-backed plot to assassinate Djukanovic in 2016 has been overturned. Even the rector of the main university has been purged in exchange for a Russophile.

Belgrade and Moscow are gloating. Serbian President Vucic hopes to re-attach Montenegro to Serbia as part of a broader ambition to create what he calls a “SerbianWorld” that would include parts of Kosovo and Bosnia. His Defense Minister, who denies the genocide at Srebrenica, advocates a greater Serbian political space, the cause for which the genocide was committed. The Russians are using the friendlier officials in Montenegro’s defense establishment to gain access to confidential NATO information. Violence and vandalism are plaguing minority communities that have long supported Djukanovic.

President Djukanovic himself is staying calm, biding his time for a reversal of the electoral defeat. While his coalition lost a municipal election in his hometown of Niksic on March 14, his party did well and signaled that he is still a force to be reckoned with. His opponents are pouring in money and Russian-generated disinformation in their effort to weaken Djukanovic further, in preparation for the next presidential election in 2023.

The United States and the European Union have so far refrained from expressing strong concern, despite the well-known Serbian and Russian interference during the campaign. Election day was reasonably free and fair and the subsequent transition was constitutional and mostly peaceful. Djukanovic’s coalition had been in power for a long time and had worn out its credibility with some people in both Washington and Brussels by accruing repeated and persistent corruption and organized crime allegations. It looked initially like the kind of alternation in power that is normal and desirable in a real democracy. 

An election dominated by Serbian and Russian disinformation does not, however, betoken democratic alternation. Montenegro’s problem is that it never generated a pro-Western opposition capable of alternating with Djukanovic’s coalition. The current government has pledged not to reverse the Western thrust of the country’s foreign policy, but in practice it is doing just that. NATO has been concerned enough to send a security team to ensure that classified information does not go astray. The deputy prime minister has admitted to breaches of NATO classified information by a newly appointed security official. The European Union has objected to several legislative initiatives, including closing the special prosecution office charged with investigating the 2016 assassination plot.

Washington has been silent. It should not stay that way. President Biden, decorated by the Montenegro in 2018, knows the country well and supported its NATO aspirations when he was Vice President. So too did prominent Republicans like Secretary of State Pompeo and Senator Lindsay Graham. The U.S. Administration and Congress should both ring a loud alarm warning that the current Montenegrin government will not be allowed to undermine the Alliance from inside.

Montenegro has been a notable, decades-long success story. It stayed out of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, liberated itself from Slobodan Milosevic’s autocracy, declared independence peacefully, converted most of its economy to a market system, opened negotiations on all the required “chapters” for accession to the EU, and joined NATO, where it contributes in particular to cybersecurity. That long record of success is now at risk. If President Biden wants to encourage other countries to travel this difficult path, Washington should lend a helping hand.