Road to Nowhere

Montenegro has lost its patience as well.

No one can say reliably how long the monologue that Serbia started about 10 years ago will last; a monologue with an endless changing of anger to disappointment, self-pity, love, suspicion, threats, bluffs, slyness, attacks of truth, begging and cursing. It couldn't be stopped, interrupted, contradicted although it often seemed false and calculating. Everyone left the table and walked away followed by insults and beatings. Only Montenegro stayed as the last uninterested listener, who has started fidgeting.

Although he's chased everyone away and got punched on the nose along the way, Milosevic is still not asking anyone about anything, not listening and not giving up his monologue. He's dictating conditions to the entire world, asking for continuity, apologies from everyone and declarations that he is innocent and consistently peaceful. Until they do that he refuses to talk to anyone who wants to help Serbia (and Montenegro). That's his way of scaring and blackmailing the world.

That's what the dispute over the failed talks with the International Monetary Foundation in Paris boils down to. The IMF people thought they should, perhaps, set some conditions for Belgrade to grant loans, but then they found out that it's the other way around because Milosevic thinks he's selling even when he's buying. He must have hated unscrupulous America when he bought a pair of shoes in Dayton and realized that he would have to pay - not the salesman. It's a miracle that the sober Avramovic hasn't lost his mind over that logic.

When someone bigger and stronger threatens someone weaker, it's rough and unpleasant but not crazy. When the weaker threatens the stronger, as Milosevic is doing now when he's obviously been defeated, when doing that is completely unreasonable, then it's his nature which he can't change. The stronger has to see if they want to punish him more or start pitying him.

But, let's say the argument with the world can be interpreted differently.

However, Montenegro's backing off and obvious lack of readiness to follow Milosevic and Serbia to the very end is the best proof that here in Belgrade we're dealing with the bestial nature of the regime not with some ideology or other.

Everyone else who fled the former Yugoslavia might have had motives of their own. Slovenia and Croatia certainly did want independence while Macedonia and Bosnia wanted out of Belgrade's reach. But in Montenegro, Milosevic toppled one elite and brought in another, loyal to him, at the very start. These people followed him, perhaps with no great elation but with no great resistance through all his adventures.

Certainly, they had no other choice nor did Montenegro which found itself in an hostile environment, almost completely cut off from the world. Also, Bulatovic and Djukanovic might have thought there are a lot of serious, long-term reasons to stay with Serbia and that Belgrade should be given time to collect its thoughts. If they are increasingly independent now, following Dayton, and Djukanovic's approach is essentially different to Milosevic's, it's because they realized that things are hopeless in Belgrade.

If it were just a case of politics, it would make sense to wait and push for changes but who can wait for a change in nature? And this isn't just a question of Slobodan Milosevic but something that is hard to name but is frighteningly tough and draws its strength from national mythology, communism and primitive beliefs, historic errors and misconceptions, unrealistic images of ourselves, others and the world, and it persistently renews itself thanks to lies and robbery. Just prior to and during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia everyone else acted as if they were ready to and able to compromise, only Milosevic kept repeating the same thing as if his was the only possible and natural expression of the Serb nation. He counted on superior force and seemed to be trying hard to present the nation and nature in the worst possible light to make it unacceptable to everyone and get an excuse to use force.

It's incomprehensible how Milosevic and the nucleus he represents can continue, without fail, to miss every opportunity to get things back to normal in Serbia and find ways to make things impossible and unacceptable even for Montenegro. Serbia is refusing and avoiding privatization. Serbia wants to topple the Governor, who's keeping the currency stable, because nothing can be allowed to be stable in this empire of improvisation. Serbia has turned to China and North Korea. She needs JUL and doesn't need parliament, parties, elections and free press.

Montenegro practically has no place to turn but it can't take the road leading nowhere. There were efforts to send positive signals to Italy. Djukanovic is back in Washington. An economic delegation went to Slovenia to try to open new channels and avoid Belgrade under the blockade. JUL is not popular in Podgorica and there are discrete signals of affection for Avramovic.

The Montenegrin opposition is constantly attacking the authorities for controlling the media but the TV news from Podgorica were so dangerously liberal to Belgrade that the Serbian state TV discontinued them. In Montenegro, they're not happy with the maddening propaganda from Belgrade but they haven't discontinued it. So we see which side feels endangered and inferior. This is the same inferiority that destroyed the previous state, that led to war and ethnic cleansing since it is based on the assumption that no one likes the Serbs and no one wants to live with them.

That's why they had to start first and be quicker than the others.

The Milosevic regime lies on a deep rooted feeling that it can't survive any challenge. As if everything would be destroyed if someone else's voice was heard, Montenegrin, Avramovic's or opposition, and to Milosevic all that is beginning to look the same and is equally unpleasant. He's not even asking his propaganda experts to go after Avramovic or the Montenegrins any more. Just keep them off the air since they already exist and won't keep quiet.

Recently, Montenegro parliament Speaker Marovic said the ruling party in the republic is ready to accept a possible election defeat and that might have sounded normal or like demagogy, whatever. But, it seems to me that that shows an essentially different attitude towards power. None of the Socialists in Serbia has said anything similar. They always said defeat is impossible, which voters can interpret as a threatening message that there will be no transfer of power regardless of the election outcome.

The Montenegro authorities are not that tense. In Serbia, the regime is trying to bet on everything and create the impression that only Milosevic can be president and only the SPS, the ruling party, with the help of JUL which will probably be left to the voters. Everything else is the end of Serbia, total destruction, death, the end of the world. Montenegro has become open to changes and Serbia hasn't and that is the main reason for the growing tension between them.

No one can say how far away from Belgrade Podgorica will get, whether this state will break up and in what way or if Montenegro is prepared and able to go for total independence. But I would say that Serbia, to be able to face reality, has to be left alone once and stop looking around over its borders. Until it clearly sees what it is, Serbia has to stop asking itself how big it is, forget any form of wider links, associations or escape from itself into any kind of dream of Yugoslavias and Balkan federations. In that sense Montenegro is only in the way.