Conception and Contraception

Before the Orthodox Christmas, Montenegrin Prime Minister Filip Vujanovic stated in an interview for Sloboda magazine of Berane that significant changes in the concept behind the Yugoslav Army (VJ) will need to take place.  Vujanovic believes that the army should be made of professionals, that army service should be limited to at most six months, with service in one's republic, that active officers should be paid well and regularly, along with army pensioners, and that military academies should be attractive and desirable.  Is all this coming at a good time?

Without going into greater details regarding this initiative, the list of changes to the VJ could easily be proclaimed a list of good wishes, especially the second part, about good and regular salaries and pensions, and about the attractions of military education and the profession of a military officer.  Three quarters of the recently adopted federal budget are in fact devoted to defense, with the biggest part of those funds being earmarked for military salaries and pensions.  About how high these salaries and pensions are is hardly worth discussing, even though the 90 German marks an army major gets must hardly seem small to civilians whose average salary has dropped below 60 German marks.  Both military officers and civilians can be seen peddling goods on the street and on outdoor markets in order to get by.

The first part of Vujanovic's initiative - professionalization, six month army service and service in one's republic - attracted far more attention and caused the first sparks, even though no one in the federal government said anything on this topic.  Secretary of the Center for Civilian-Military Relations in Belgrade, Milorad Timotin who is himself a colonel in retirement, noted that a public discussion has already begun regarding Vujanovic's statements in which "as is usual with us, there is a wide range of extreme opinions."  "Some support him entirely, while others criticize him completely.  As the head of executive authority in Montenegro, Vujanovic is also responsible for the general issues of defense of the republic which are under his jurisdiction according to the Constitution.  Therefore, his decision to pose questions regarding the transformation of the army and of defense in general is completely legitimate and should be taken as a normal and desirable part of democratic practice."

A LITTLE HISTORY: The first public demands for military service in one's republic came from Slovenia, in the early eighties, at the same time as the unthinkable proposals at that time regarding the institution of "civilian" military service and honoring of religious bans among some recruits forbidding them to carry arms.  At that time the answer did not consist only of a general refusal - which some recruits had to pay in prison terms and additional military service - but also to a short-lived, from the beginning doomed initiative for women to serve the army.  In the late eighties, prior to the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), the Slovenian and Croat demand for recruits not to leave their republics became political slogans.  With the beginning of the bloody disintegration - the "recruit contingent" from March of 1991 suffered the most in this - on the one hand, the public and private stop to sending recruits to the army was turned into a call to desertion, and on the other, into a refusal to take part in the civil war.  The rest is well known.

"The greatest school of brotherhood and unity," the standard metaphor for the Yugoslav National Army also had great difficulties in deciding to shorten the military term of service.  The shortest term was 15 months, that is to say one year for recruits with two years of university.  Before the disintegration of the SFRY, the Army opted for professionalization in the form which is still called "contract soldier," when in 1991 volunteers were also called to the Army.  The effects of introducing profession soldiers were not clearly analyzed, although a whole slew of patriotic memoirs have already been written about the wars between 1991-1995, as well as a number of indictments for the Hague.

In the disintegration of the Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav National Army was used in the worst possible way - as a civil war army, without any noticeable protest from the Army heads.  That army's inheritor on the territory of the "curtailed" Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav Army (VJ), opted for professionalization, depoliticization and support of Slobodan Milosevic's regime leading into every free and democratic election.  At the same time, it accepted quietly all ethnic cleanups in the officers ranks, as well as being put in second place behind the police.

TIMING OF THE SITUATION: This is why the performance of the Army in the three-month bombing of Yugoslavia represented a great surprise to the NATO alliance.  With such an experience it is fair to ask about the timing of the Montenegrin Prime Minister's demand for changes in the conception of the VJ.  Especially since Filip Vujanovic enjoys the reputation of a man who as Montenegrin Minister of Internal Affairs successfully prevented attempts for influencing political developments in Montenegro from Serbia, including the presidential elections in which he defeated Milo Djukanovic.  As a proven man it is hardly likely that he did not chose well the moment in which to demand for a change in the conception of the VJ.

Milorad Timotic points out that nearly everyone agrees on the need for the professionalization of the VJ - the majority of opposition parties which stated their opinions on defense and security, as well as the commanding ranks of the VJ.  "It's merely an issue of the extent of professionalization of the army in its entirety, that is to say according to corps and service, and according to how much it would all cost.  These are complex questions and they should be dealt on the basis of developed expert proposals, with the participation of some neutral scientific institutions and non-government organizations."  According to Timotic, it is not the time for putting and end to mandatory military service, but the rules on civilian service could be reduced (which are presently twice the length of regular military duty).  "Besides that," Timotic notes, "a reduction in the term of military service is an issue that cannot be considered without a serious expert analysis.  An answer is needed to why a shortening of the term of service is being sought.  The demands of training in certain corpses must be considered, as well as the manning of units and the organization of live in the army, but also whether our neighbors have also reduced their terms of military service."

SPLITTING HAIRS: Colonel Dragan Vuksic, advisor on international relations for the Movement for a Democratic Serbia and former military attache to Berlin thinks that the subject initiated by Vujanovic is very topical, that is to say, it warrants and demands very serious consideration.  As far as the brief news agency reports on Filip Vujanovic's statements, Vuksic thinks that "Mr. Vujanovic's ideas on changes to the conception of the VJ warrant close consideration, more because a prime minister is putting them forth, than because of what he actually proposes," because professionalization, the shortening of the term of military service and good salaries and pensions are issues that are mentioned always and everywhere when questions of changes in the army are being discussed.  "However, it should be kept in mind that it is precisely these issued that are hardest to decide upon, and finally only when political, military-strategic, readiness wise, financial and other conditions for changes in the concept of the army in its entirety are reached, when agreement is reached and when decisions on all other issues are adopted," Vuksic notes.

"The Army inevitably shares the fate of a state which is isolated with sanctions, impoverished and without a future, at least for as long as the regime of Slobodan Milosevic is in power," Colonel Vuksic states.  "A regular, professional or combined army is a problem to which there is no single answer.  As far as a military term of service of six months is concerned, we should remember the sad truth that a state and a people who are led by politicians into dead ends, conflicts and wars, and which need to be rescued by the army are only to be pitied.  No army can carry out such a task, especially not one whose military term of service lasts only six months...  Serving the army in one's republic in a country like Yugoslavia appears a little like splitting hairs."

The environment in which Yugoslavia finds itself, without even considering the nearly 100,000 NATO soldiers in B&H, in Kosovo and Macedonia, is not one that can be said to be friendly or permitting complex, expensive and long term transformations.  At this moment the VJ is barely managing to feed itself, and as far as the length of the term of service goes, it is not much longer than six months at this time, when long weekends, time off, etc. are included.  All that remains is to change the conception.