Lingering Coup D’Etat

by Milos Vasic & Filip Svarm

We’re so used to life in the shadow of a threat of violence that no one even notices that we’re in a permanent state of counterrevolution in the form of a very slow, constant coup d’etat, with no end in sight. That’s the way to avoid excessive drama, unnecessary violence and damaging embarrassment. Events grow to the brink of a real coup (as in Banja Luka and Montenegro) but the line is never crossed; the semblance of peace and stability has to be preserved

A coup d’etat is a quick, violent action by armed forces which can have two goals: the violent overthrow or violent preservation of the existing regime through a fait accompli. Usually, it is presented as the saving of the homeland and results in a national salvation or national unity government. It is regularly followed by a suspension of the constitution and other aspects of democracy, human and civil rights, the law and other things. As a rule, it includes the closing of borders, ports and airports, declaration of a state of siege, dissolving of parliament and parties, the abolishment of the media and imprisonment of political opponents. It also claims some victims out of "historic need".

There is a difference between a coup d’etat and a revolution: a coup is planned, prepared and conducted from state structures with the armed forces of that state (the army and police) in violation of the oath that they will protect, implement and preserve the laws and constitution. Whether that violation of the oath will be punished, depends on success or failure. A revolution is when a state is toppled by armed formations which do not belong to the structures of power. For example, Adolf Hitler can be said to have attempted a revolution in 1924 in Munich, but the burning of the Reichstag and the night of the long knives were coups, although limited to specific goals (against his rivals and political opponents).

The best known model for a coup is the Mediterranean-Latin model, which is popular in South America, Asia and Africa. Young officers, headed by a general (lower ranks as well), take the presidential palace one night, capture ministries, the telephone exchange and radio station, arrest the head of state, prime minister and government and sometimes shoot them, and the next day issue a statement saying that they saved the homeland and formed a government or committee of national salvation. They usually invoke various moral and patriotic reasons. During the Cold War, coups of that kind were often inspired, assisted and/or organized from the outside. The great powers divided those coups into progressive (organized by the Soviet Union) and reactionary (organized by the US). Those coups were not limited to the third world. In Poland in 1980, Jaruzelski’s coup was a desperate attempt to save a regime which was politically and historically bankrupt, and left with little alternative since the Soviet Union would probably have intervened otherwise.

The former Yugoslav National Army (JNA) and its party has had pre-meditated scenarios for a coup, always taking into consideration the current strategic and internal dangers. These have been hypocritically called states of emergency, states of increased danger of war, direct danger of war etc. Plans for states of emergency always came in at least two versions: danger from the east and danger from the west.

When things turned sour in 1989, this whole scheme turned out to be no good. No one had even noticed that the coup (the same one that’s still going on) had started with the eighth session of the Serbian Central Committee. Slobodan Milosevic came to power with the sympathy and support of startled generals and the police on his side. The main lesson to be learned from Milosevic’s career is extremely simple: not everything has to be done right away, in one night of tanks and bloodshed, which could be counterproductive. The best thing to do is to drag things out, keep shaking up the legal order, and keep things out of balance by alarming the public and exploiting national and political myths, creating crises and always keeping one step ahead of you opponents.

The coup in Serbia has been ongoing for 10 years. The regime is defended with a series of fait accomplis, diversions and subversions. The coup that we’re living is an undeclared dirty war of low intensity. In 1990, when the generals wanted a state of emergency like Poland had, Milosevic refused. The same thing happened in 1991 when Croatia was arming itself. In March 1991, we were closest to a coup: Milosevic orchestrated a police intervention in Belgrade and opened this possibility fully, but he did not trust the army, and the JNA didn’t dare go it alone without their Soviet friends. In mid-March we seem to have been closest to a coup, but that was just smoke in the generals’ eyes and a signal for Slovenia and Croatia. The real coup was acting in silence while the army officers feverishly drew up another plan, unaware that Milosevic had given them another diversion. The parts of the former Yugoslavia which Milosevic’s regime could not defeat were amputated in orchestrated wars which turned attention away from Serbia and it's political scene.

The technique and strategy of this permanent counterrevolution were and still are infiltration, subversion, plots and organized provocation along police and army lines. Wherever the provocation was bearable, they increased it to unbearable; where there was none, it was organized and the ideology of preventative revenge did the rest.

After the war in Bosnia started and the new state, the FRY, was formed, this ongoing coup followed the same principles until 1993, until the Bosnian Serb assembly at Jahorina, when Milosevic realized this mess would not have a happy ending. Dobrica Cosic was sacrificed and Zoran Lilic brought in. Milosevic moved away from Karadzic and company. Then came 1995 and the diversion called Republic of Serb Krajina fell under Milosevic’s uncaring view, while the second diversion, the Republika Srpska, was saved by the Dayton agreement. Milosevic was confirmed once again as "a factor of stability and peace in the Balkans".

Milosevic is using the same strategy against his political opponents regardless of whether they are Serbs from Bosnia and Croatia, the Serbian opposition or Montenegrins. The goal of a coup is always the same: the violent preservation of the endangered authorities, in this case personal and family. Milosevic is trying to do the same in the RS and Montenegro, but Milo Djukanovic and Biljana Plavsic have gone down that road before, and they’re using the same strategy against him. Djukanovic saw what was coming and placed the police under his own control, and without an infiltration of the police, as the first step in his understanding of politics, Milosevic doesn’t know how to start the game. The nomination of Momir Bulatovic as presidential candidate and the two ruling parties in Montenegro are leading Milosevic to a place he’s never been before: the use of force. Djukanovic is openly challenging him to attempt a coup d’etat, and Plavsic is doing the same. The RS president is cleansing the police force of those men loyal to Pale, saying that the police have to respect the laws and protect all citizens (Pale TV has accused the new Banja Luka police chief of protecting Moslems and Croats).

So Milosevic has created the deepest possible divisions in all three states along the right lines: honesty against thievery, democracy against authoritarianism, and law against lawlessness. Vojislav Seselj isn’t calling for a military intervention in Montenegro by accident, but Djukanovic isn’t buying into that bluff. Plavsic is having an easier time, because she has SFOR on her home ground, and the international forces are looking to arrest Karadzic.

All that does not have to bother Milosevic: his coup techniques have lost him Yugoslavia and the Krajina, and now he’s losing the RS and Montenegro, but that does not endanger his political priority - his personal power.