Balkan

[Lord Protector]

 

In Balkans, a fragile order grows brittle, threatening stability  

 

Yugoslavia's breakup a quarter-century ago unleashed wars that killed about 140,000 people and unleashed deep ethnic hostilities. Today, the region’s carefully calibrated path to recovery hangs in the balance.

 

By Peter Ford, Staff Writer  APRIL 21, 2017

Bida Smajlovic prays near the plaque that displays the names of those killed in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. (DADO RUVIC/REUTERS/FILE)

Krupa na Vrbasu, Bosnia-Herzegovina

 

Zeljko Tomasevic, a local farmer, stands in the early morning sunshine beside a cascading woodland stream as a simple water-driven grindstone transforms his wheat into flour.

“There is far too much politics in these parts,” he snorts. “That’s why I don’t care to follow them too closely. All that matters to me is being able to make a living.”

In this bucolic corner of northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mr. Tomasevic can still afford to be indifferent to international affairs. But perhaps not for much longer. Almost two decades after the guns of war fell silent in the Balkans, marking the end of Yugoslavia’s breakup, renewed tensions are bubbling up, threatening a carefully calibrated order that has yielded an increasingly brittle stability.

“The Balkans are boiling again,” as Muslim, Croatian, and Serbian nationalist politicians stir a bitter soup of ethnic resentment and social grievances, warns Srecko Latal, founder of Social Overview Service (SOS), a think tank based in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. 

The region’s future, he adds, hangs in the balance. Will Europe and the United States notice in time?

The Trump administration has not yet shown any particular interest in the region where US-led diplomacy ended the war in Bosnia and US-led airstrikes won the war in Kosovo at the end of the 20th century. But after several years of neglecting the region, the European Union now seems ready to try harder to bring countries like Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro into its relatively prosperous and peaceful bosom.

Not least because while Europe’s back was turned, outside powers such as Russia and Turkey began making political and business inroads, playing on their respective cultural and historical ties with Orthodox Slavs and Muslims.

The stakes are high for the EU. The western Balkans have become a geopolitical chessboard on which Europe is struggling to firmly establish its democratic political style and substance in the face of autocratic strongman models patterned on Moscow and Ankara, which have found ready adherents in the region.

The EU is increasingly alert to Russia’s moves to expand its sphere of influence. “Geopolitical issues are pulling the Balkans back into Europe’s focus,” says Dimitar Bechev, a Balkans expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “The tide is turning and more attention is being paid.”

A quarter century after collapse

It’s about time, too. Trouble is breaking out all over.

A quarter-century ago, Yugoslavia broke apart in a violent spasm of civil wars that claimed about 140,000 lives and stoked ethnic hatreds that Europe thought it had left behind in 1945. Massacres and the threat of massacres sparked waves of ethnic cleansing that chased minorities from their homes.

Western diplomacy and military action put an end to the conflicts, and the EU then pledged to help the new nations born of war become members of the Union. Getting in shape for that status, the thinking went, would deepen democracy, ease ethnic tensions, and boost economic prosperity as governments swung into a Western orbit.

JACOB TURCOTTE/STAFF

But it has not worked out like that.

In tiny Montenegro, due to join NATO this year, prosecutors say they have mounting evidence that Russian agents were behind a failed coup attempt last October against the Western-leaning government.

In Macedonia, President Gjorge Ivanov is refusing to let the opposition form a government, though it is the only party with enough parliamentary votes to do so, because it has promised to improve the language rights of the Albanian minority. His refusal is stoking ethnic tensions.

In Kosovo, President Hashim Thaçi is trying an end run around the Constitution in a bid to form a national army dominated by ethnic Albanians, despite opposition from minority Serbs. Kosovo belonged to neighboring Serbia until the 1998-99 war.

In Bosnia, Muslim leaders are trying to get the International Court of Justice to revisit its 2007 ruling that cleared Serbia of genocide during the war. The president of the autonomous Bosnian-Serbian entity, meanwhile, is threatening to hold a referendum on independence, a step toward the breakup of the country created by the 1995 Dayton Agreement.

Tensions are rising as hopes fade that Western incentives, especially from the EU, would induce Balkan leaders to cooperate across ethnic lines, carry out economic reforms, and turn their countries into modern, democratic, functioning states.

The prospective prize for such behavior has always been membership in the EU. But the western Balkan nations’ chances of joining the EU now seem increasingly remote, and the attractions of the crisis-ridden Union less obvious. Its influence and credibility have suffered.

For the past several years, Europe has been distracted by its own internal problems – the euro currency crisis, the flood of refugees and migrants that poured into EU member states, and Britain’s pending departure from the Union.

Brussels has sometimes appeared to neglect its neighbors’ aspirations, and those neighbors are only too aware that public opinion within the EU has turned against the idea of letting new members join.

“Our goal to join the EU is not in question,” says retired Serbian diplomat Zoran Milivojevic, sipping a small cup of black coffee thick enough to stand a spoon in, as it is drunk in Belgrade, Serbia. “It’s the only way we can establish the rule of law and human rights. But it doesn’t depend on Serbia anymore; we’ll have to see how the EU’s enlargement policy develops.”

EU entry terms

Only Serbia and Montenegro have even begun negotiating their EU entry terms, and those talks could well continue for as long as 10 years, European diplomats say privately. Forty-one percent of Serbs don’t believe their country will ever join the Union, according to a recent opinion poll.

Critics claim that the EU sets bureaucratic and technical conditions on candidate countries, but ignores the state of their democracies. “Expectations that stable democracies would emerge from the EU accession process have not panned out,” says Florian Bieber, who teaches politics at the University of Graz in Austria.

That’s because Europe prizes stability above all else, according to the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group, an association of international experts on the region. “The result has been the rise of a regional ‘stabilitocracy,’ weak democracies with autocratically minded leaders, who govern through informal patronage networks,” argues a just-published report by the group. “The status of democracy is weak and declining.”

Though the region’s leaders pay lip service to EU membership as a goal, that is as far as it goes, suggests Predrag Kojovic, head of a reformist multiethnic party in Bosnia and a member of the Sarajevo regional council, a local government body. “If the rule of law applied, these guys would go to jail” for corruption, he says. “The leaders of the big, ethnically based parties have no incentive to get too close to the EU.”

Europe’s focus on stability explains why the West welcomed Aleksandar Vučić’s convincing victory in Serbia’s presidential polls in April without complaining about his role in stifling a free press or hampering civil society.

But the risk is that if any of the region’s autocrats found themselves in danger of losing power, “they would not hesitate to create instability by stoking ethnic tensions,” warns Dejan Anastasijevic, a veteran Serbian political observer.

That is just what is happening in Macedonia, where the constitutional crisis has an extra edge to it because Russia and the West have taken opposite sides. That sort of geopolitical standoff is complicating the region’s domestic politics more and more as Moscow seeks to stall Balkan countries’ tentative moves toward Western institutions such as the EU and NATO.

Russia is building its most visible ties with Serbia, playing up their cultural and religious affinities, giving Belgrade MIG fighter jets and tanks, and buying control of Serbia’s energy monopoly through Gazprom. The Russian oil and gas giant is active on the soft power front, too, sponsoring soccer team Red Star, for example, and paying for the religious mosaics that will decorate the dome of Belgrade’s long-unfinished Orthodox cathedral.

So warm is Russia’s embrace that 25 percent of Serbs believe Moscow is their country’s biggest aid donor, according to a recent poll, though in fact the EU’s donations of €2.7 billion ($2.86 million) over the past 15 years dwarf Russian gifts. But the EU enjoys little public popularity, and only 21 percent of respondents were aware of its generosity.

Balancing act

Mr. Vučić of Serbia, following in the footsteps of former Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, is playing a delicate balancing act between East and West. Serbia refused to join Western sanctions against Moscow over its annexation of Crimea, but its Army last year conducted more than 10 times as many training maneuvers with Western forces as with Russian troops, according to the Defense Ministry.

Vučić told cheering supporters on election night that his election success “demonstrated that a large majority of Serbian citizens favors the continuation of the European path while maintaining close ties with China and Russia.”

Russia is also giving very public support to Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska, the autonomous Serbian entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed him to Moscow shortly before the US put him on a sanctions blacklist for posing a threat to the Dayton Agreement and to the existence of the country.

Mr. Dodik has threatened to hold a referendum on independence for his Serb-dominated territory – a breakaway that observers say would almost inevitably lead to war. Whether he means it, though, is uncertain. He and Mr. Putin can throw a wrench in Bosnia’s complicated political works and render the state ineffectual more easily from inside Bosnia than from outside.

The limits of an ethnic lens

Edib introduces himself simply to a visitor to his small cheese shop in the mountains of central Bosnia – with just his first name and a beefy handshake.

Edib is a Bosnian Muslim who spent his working life as a mechanic, with a sideline in repairing the clocks on Croatian Roman Catholic church towers. Retired now, he has bought a flock of sheep that in summer graze on the Alpine pastures outside his window. In winter, when snow covers the grass, he trucks his animals to low-lying land in Republika Srpska, where he entrusts them to an Orthodox Serbian herder.

If Bosnia’s political leaders were as broad-minded, ethnically tolerant, and ecumenical as Edib, the country would be in a great deal better shape.

But they are not. Viewing every issue through an ethnic lens and seeking ethnic advantage from every decision, the Muslim, Croatian, and Serbian nationalist parties that share power in Bosnia have led the country into almost permanent deadlock.

Parliament passed only a handful of laws last year; the tripartite presidency has not met for two months; the nation has no national anthem because nobody can agree on the words. The three communities cannot agree, either, on how many people live in Bosnia and Herzegovina, so they could not validate a census. And the government cannot agree to enact economic reforms on which the International Monetary Fund is insisting in return for loans.

For the past 10 years, “there has been no progress, no new institutions, and some rollback,” laments Valentin Inzko, the high representative for Bosnia, whose job it is to oversee implementation of the Dayton Agreement. “Local leaders have failed,” he sighs, looking out over the steep and narrow valley in which Sarajevo sits.

Some contend that the Dayton framework, which froze but did not resolve ethnic disputes and used ethnic identity as an organizing principle, was bound to lead to this. “It would have taken political leaders with the qualities of Gandhi and Mandela to make it work,” says Valery Perry, an analyst with the Democratization Policy Council, an international group promoting liberal democracy.

In any event, says Mr. Latal of SOS, “nobody speaks on behalf of the nation. We see an increasing focus on Bosniak [Muslim], Croat, and Serb national interests.”

Similar trends are clear beyond Bosnia’s borders, says Milos Popovic, a researcher for the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy. “Nationalism and ethnic scapegoating is a cheap way to maintain your popularity,” he says. “And memories of war are very fresh.”

Only firm action can halt the slide, argues Mr. Inzko. “The international community should be more prescriptive and more robust,” he says.

Latal agrees, calling for a “stronger outside political presence and stronger diplomacy. The EU could change its policies relatively quickly,” he says. “I just hope they do not wait for fighting to break out to do so.”

A different time

But this is not 1914, or even 1991, the year that civil war tore Yugoslavia apart.

True, Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, warned in a recent interview with the Financial Times, “If we leave them alone ... all those countries, we will have war again.”

And the commissioner in charge of enlarging the Union, Johannes Hahn, told western Balkan leaders in March that “either the region as a whole picks up momentum and we generate a genuinely positive narrative, or we end up ... with a stream of bad news slamming the window [to EU membership] firmly shut.”

It is also true, as Mr. Milivojevic, the former Serbian diplomat, worries, that “ethnic questions are still open, and their mixture with economic and social problems is explosive.” Thirty-eight percent of Serbs fear war will break out in the Balkans in the next five years, according to a February poll.

At the same time, 74 percent of them said Serbia should not go to war to recover Kosovo, however dear to their hearts the province is. And only 6 percent said they would take up arms to defend fellow Serbs if they were suffering from an armed conflict in a neighboring country.

“War is not in the cards,” says Dr. Bechev, in North Carolina. “The status quo is fragile, but likely belligerents do not have the means to wage war, nor the international support, nor the finance, nor the armaments, nor the mental attitude.”

Even from Banja Luka, the capital of Republika Srpska and a hotbed of resentment against Bosnian Muslims, the view is the same. The town is just getting by – a nondescript provincial center whose largest city-center building is the 19th-century headquarters of the Austro-Hungarian imperial governor. But poverty and the lack of prospects are driving thousands of young people abroad every year, and exhaustion and apathy prevail among those who stay, says local teacher Mladen Bubonjic. 

“People are too fed up with everything to want to fight,” he explains. “Maybe they’ll bark. But they won’t bite.” 

 

 

Edited May 4, 2017 by slow

[Lord Protector]

 

In the Balkans, an Old Idea Whose Time Has Passed

JASMIN MUJANOVIĆ

“Partition it!” is the last refuge of foreign policy experts who really ought to know better.

If there is an evergreen thesis in international political commentary, it is that whatever ails Southeastern Europe, some new borders will surely fix it. The most recent proposal comes from John R. Schindler, columnist for Observer and a one-time American intelligence official. Schindler’s piece is interesting only in that it couches a 19th century canard in 21st century geopolitics. Namely, he argues the international community should partition the Balkans to establish new mono-ethnic nation-states, but this time to check Russian influence in the region.

Schindler never quite explains how or why new ethnic Bantustans in the Balkans would curb Russian incursions into the region. If anything, he echoes popular Kremlin tropes about the need to return to great power politics by suggesting that “we [i.e. the U.S.] treat the Kremlin as a full partner in any territorial changes in Southeastern Europe… This will resemble an updated version of 1878’s Congress of Berlin.”

Will it, though? After all, Balkan nationalists with irredentist fantasies—the primary audience for Schindler’s machinations—are well known for their reasoned approach to geopolitics. Accordingly, Schindler assures us that “the locals” too will be consulted on how the U.S. and Russia should go about re-fragmenting the Balkans.

Bosnia and Herzegovina? It’s a “ramshackle pseudo-state”, but the West will consult its constituent people as we amputate half the country and merge it with Serbia. Macedonia? Create a “Greater Albania” with large chunks of its territory—but all the while consulting, always consulting. Serbia itself will get a final say over what happens to the province of Vojvodina and the Sandžak region—presumably as a gesture of goodwill to Moscow. The rest of the region will presumably not get such a veto.

If all of this sounds suspiciously familiar (and absurd) it is because Schindler’s piece is essentially a rewrite of Timothy Less’ piece in Foreign Affairs from last December. All of the same beats are here: partition Macedonia, dissolve Bosnia, and rejigger Albania and Serbia. Spiritually, of course, both writers are indebted to Robert D. Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts, the influential 1993 book that popularized the “ancient ethnic hatreds” line to explain all events in Southeastern Europe since time immemorial.

And like Kaplan and Less, Schindler is not one to get bogged down in the details of history or current events. In his timeline Albania is already an EU member state (it is not), Vojvodina suddenly came into “autonomy” in 2008 (try 1974), and Serbia—an EU candidate country steadily opening new accession chapters—is being “isolated” by the West (astronomically far from the truth). Nor is there any reflection on how a region with an average unemployment rate of 21% (and nearly 50% among youth) could avert the almost certain economic catastrophe that would follow social engineering of this sort.

But beyond economics, it’s important to keep the big picture in mind: the last time this was tried, the result was a decade of war, some 150,000 deaths, the displacement of millions, and the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War. Neither Schindler nor Less ever quite gets around to explaining why their proposals would not precipitate the same horror.

Still, the situation in the former Yugoslavia and Southeastern Europe more broadly is not stable. As I noted last year for the European Council on Foreign Relations, the region is on an accelerated drift towards authoritarianism. The crisis plaguing the Balkans then is not a dearth of mono-ethnic nation-states; it is a crisis of governance and a lack of substantive democracy.

Indeed, mono-ethnicity itself has little if any relationship to political stability or the rule of law; witness only the democratic rollback in ethnically homogenous Central Europe, or the autocratic climate in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity which Schindler, recall, proposes to join to likewise increasingly illiberal Serbia.

After nearly three decades of international presence in the region, the Balkan states have all the overt trappings of parliamentary democracy but with few of the substantive norms of genuinely liberal societies. Part of the reason for this is a decline in meaningful democracy assistance on the part of the U.S. since 2006 at least, and the EU’s pernicious focus on “stability” (rather than democratization) in the ensuing vacuum. The latter especially is a policy which has empowered illiberal leaders across the region.

The other part of the story is local. Unlike the rest of Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans never had their 1989 moment. In fact, it was precisely in order to avoid such democratic revolutions (and the continued agitation of civil society in the former Eastern Bloc) that the most conservative and reactionary elements of the old Yugoslav regime—those in Belgrade—orchestrated the dissolution of that state in favour of a “Greater Serbia.” Insomuch as these architects of chaos relied on ethnic narratives to navigate the end of the Cold War, it was no more than a sleight of hand to preserve them in power. And many of these elites, like Montenegro’s Milo Đukanović, are still there to this day.

With much of the democratic world gripped by reactionary nationalist fervour, now is no time to go inventing troubles in the Balkans. Instead, the U.S. and EU would do well to re-invest their diplomatic muscle in buttressing the efforts of genuine local democratic actors, like the activists behind Macedonia’s “Colorful Revolution” and the students protesting the lurch towards one-man rule in Serbia. This is where new ideas, new leaders, and new options will emerge.

There are no shortcuts to democracy. If the West wants lasting stability in the Balkans it cannot achieve as much by carving up actually existing illiberal polities in search of some buried democratic ethnos. We get there by insisting and enforcing the rule of law, free and fair elections, and the vibrancy and autonomy of civil society.

 

 

Edited May 4, 2017 by slow

[Lord Protector]

Tema o Balkanu, o nesrećnom buretu baruta koje je ostavljeno na raskršću civilizacija.

 

Topic je o celom Balkanu, ne samo o njegovom zapadnom delu, zato sam ga i postavio na podforumu Svet.

 

Prvi članak je odličan, obavezno ga pročitajte, drugi je više reakcija na Šindlerov tekst u Observeru. Sam po sebi dosta govori o jednom specifičnom viđenju balkanske problematike koji je široko rasprostranjen.

 

Kakvo je Vaše mišljenje, da li Balkan ulazi u period sukoba i neizvesnosti, ili je pred njim doba prosperiteta i mira?

 

Izvolite...

Edited May 4, 2017 by slow

[Lord Protector]

 

Greece is key NATO ally in a strategically crucial region, says U.S. ambassador

Greece is a key NATO ally in a strategically important region and relations with the United States in defence are strong, U.S. Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt said in an interview with public broadcaster ERT1 for the Armed Forces show “Me areti kai tolmi” (With virtue and bravery”), broadcast on Sunday. 
“Greece is a key NATO ally in a strategically crucial region. It is an important ally in the eastern Mediterranean at a time when America’s highest foreign policy priority is the military defeat of ISIS in Syria,” he said.
“It is also a key partner in our engagement with the countries in Northern Africa. It is a strong ally as we seek to work with the countries of the western Balkans, keeping them on the Euro-Atlantic trajectory and it is an essential partner in dealing with the challenges emerging from the Black Sea region. So Greece is right in the center of the picture.”
Asked about America’s expectations regarding bilateral relations in defence, Pyatt said Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos had an “excellent visit” to Washington DC where he had discussed regional issues with Secretary of Defence James Mattis. 
“We already have a strong alliance. Our interest now is to work together to build the kind of partnership that we need to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Some of the strategic issues in the neighborhood that I talked about, but also the challenge of terrorism which is a threat to all of our democracies,” he said. 
Concerning the importance the United States place on Souda Bay, in Crete, where NATO maintains a base, the ambassador described it as an “essential strategic asset”, very important to US naval forces operating in the eastern Mediterranean. 
“We’re grateful for that, but it’s also it a fantastic platform for strengthening the military ties between our forces. I’m very, very impressed by the kind of respectful and professional relationships between our air forces and our navies’ that work together in Souda Bay. We are very much looking forward to continuing to deepen and strengthen that relationship in a way that advances both countries’ security,” he said. 
Asked about NATO’s ongoing operations in the Aegean to minimize refugee flows, he said the United States strongly supports the work to reduce risk from migration, noting however that the long-term solution is peace in Syria. 
“We have been strong supporters of the NATO Standing Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2), which has helped reduce the risks from illegal migration into Greece. Of course the long-term solution to that problem is peace in Syria and that’s something were also working to achieve but in the meantime we are strong supporters of SNMG2,” he said. 

 

 

Edited May 4, 2017 by slow

[Lord Protector]

Ratne igre od Krita do Baltika

Autor: Žarko Rakić subota, 29.04.2017. 

 

Nepredividivi Erdogan: Vest je prošla gotovo nezapaženo: Grčka i SAD razgovaraju o proširenju američke pomorske baze na Kritu. Istovremeno, Atina predlaže Amerikancima da trajno napuste vazduhoplovnu vojnu bazu Indžirlik u Turskoj koja je trenutno najvažnije uporište NATO na južnom krilu Alijanse.

Južno krilo NATO je zbog tradicionalno loših grčko-turskih odnosa oduvek bilo velika briga zapadnog vojnog saveza. Poslednjih decenija značaj ovog regiona neslućeno je porastao zbog ratova u Avganistanu, Iraku, Libiji i Siriji, trajne krize u drugim delovima Bliskog istoka. Na sve to „nakalemili” su se problemi s Turskom koja je, nekako preko noći, postala slaba karika NATO u tom kriznom regionu. Nešto zbog nepredvidive politike Tajipa Erdogana, a još više zbog sve većeg vojnog angažovanja u Siriji i Iraku, približavanja Ankare Rusiji...

Vazduhoplovna baza Indžirlik na jugu Turske, 12 kilometara od Adana, centralni je vojno uporište NATO u ovom delu sveta. Baza je formirana negde sredinom prošlog veka na osnovu sporazuma Turske i SAD i vremenom je postala postala gotovo nezamenljivi oslonac za delovanje vazduhoplovnih snaga Alijanse.

O značaju ove baze ponajbolje govori podatak da je u njoj stacionirano i američko nuklearno oružje. Procenjuje se da Amerikanci u bazi Indžirlik imaju više od 50 atomskih bombi tipa B-61. Američki magazin „Njujorker” piše da SAD u Evropi imaju do 200 atomskih bombi, neki drugi izvore navode da ih ima neuporedivo više – oko 480 komada.

U vreme prošlogodišnjeg neupešnog puča u Turskoj baza Indžirlik je bila zatvorena. Njen komandant kasnije je uhapšen pod optužbom da je pripadao najužem kruga zaverenika a ovaj događaj je bio povod da se Amerikanci ozbiljno zabrinu zbog bezbednosti svog nuklearnog arsenala u Indžirliku.

Ulje na vatru dodao je i turski predsednik Tajip Erdogan koji je već nekoliko puta ponovio da će se ozbiljno razgovarati o prisustvu NATO i SAD u Indžirliku. Erdogan je veoma nezadovoljan američkom politikom na Bliskom istoku, posebno prema Kurdima. Zbog čega preti da bi mogao da čak i zatvorima Amerikancima vrata baze u Indžirliku.

Amerikanci ozbiljno zabrinu zbog bezbednosti svog nuklearnog arsenala u Indžirliku

(Rojters /Murad Sezer)

Grčka ponuda: I tu su u igru uskočili Grci. Videli su svoju šansu da što jače privuku SAD a istovremeno i oslabe tradiocionalnog neprijatelja – Tursku.

Idealno mesto za ove grčke planove Krit, tačnije postojeća pomorska baza Suda na severnoj strani ostrva. Ova baza već godinama važi za glavni pomorski oslonac NATO i SAD u ovom delu Sredozemnog mora. Grčki list „Ekatimerini” piše da Amerikanci sve češće kažu da je „baza Suda zapravo najbolja na celom Sredozemlju”.

Neki detalji potvrđuju takav zaključak. Strateški položaj baze je briljantan, zaliv je prirodno zaštićen a njegova dubina dozvoljava pristajanje i najvećih ratnih brodova kao što su američkii nosači aviona. U bazi postoji već dobra infrastrukutra jer je pored SAD i NATO koristi i grčka vojska.

Krajem marta grčki ministar odbranae Panos Kamenos boravio je u Vašingtonu. Grčki mediji su tada izvestili da je na dvenom redu razgovora bil i grčka ponuda da SAD i NATO snažno pojačaju svoje vojno prisustvo na Kritu. Kamenos je tada pozvao američkog kolegu Džejmsa Matisa da poseti Grčku što je ovaj prihvatio. Ukoliko se to i dogodi Matis će biti prvi američki ministar odbrane koji posle 27 godina dolazi u Atinu.

 

Souda Bay US Naval Base ‘best in the Med’

 

VASSILIS NEDOS

The aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush at Souda Bay, in Crete. The American presence in Souda has hit a new record over the past year, with dozens of military units having tied up at Marathi as the base there becomes increasingly important to allied activities in the broader region. 

Edited May 4, 2017 by slow

[MancMellow]

Podržavam sočinjenije. Ali sukladno duhu foruma predlažem promenu naslova po izboru u jedan od ova dva starija oblika

 

Αἷμος  -_-

 

Tropolj   ^_^

[namenski]

Srpski analiticari otkrili zaliv Suda, auuuuuu  :0.6:

[MancMellow]

Ok, da vidimo kako ce ovo da prodje

 

 

 

Komšije menjaju istoriju, plate im skaču 300%!

Donji dom rumunskog parlamenta je većinom glasova usvojio zakon o povećanju plata u javnom sektoru od januara 2018. godine.

Zakon je usvojen uprkos kritikama Evropske komisije i Međunarodnog monetarnog fonda, javlja Rojters.

 

Prema tom zakonu, za koji je glasalo 188 poslanika a 28 bilo protiv, mesečna plata najbolje rangiranih lekara koje zapošljava nacionalna zdravstvena služba naredne godine će porasti na 2.700 evra sa sadašnjih 1.000 evra, dok će medicinske sestre zarađivati 900 evra umesto sadašnjih 530 evra, prenosi agencija Frans pres. 

 

Plate pojedinih profesora će biti povećane za 100 odsto, a to povećanje će biti postepeno realizovano u periodu od 2018. do 2022. godine. 

 

Efekte takve izmene, koju još uvek treba da odobri predsednik Rumunije Klaus Johanis, osetiće 1,2 miliona državnih službenika i koštaće blizu deset milijardi evra u narednih pet godina, navodi francuska agencija. 

 

"Ovaj zakon će promeniti istoriju Rumunije", izjavio je lider levičarske Socijaldemokratske stranke (PSD) Liviu Dragnea. 

 

Evropska komisija je nedavno upozorila Bukurešt da ne podiže plate, a MMF saopštio da je sukcesivno rezanje poreza u protekle dve godine već značajno umanjilo državne prihode.

 

http://www.b92.net/biz/vesti/svet.php?yyyy=2017&mm=06&dd=07&nav_id=1269450

[radnik]

Tacno sam znao da ce mi biti krivo jednog dana, sto nisam isao za doktora i ucio rumunski

[Filozof manijak]

I meni, a lepo mi mama govorila ... 

[vememah]

Sa 1000 na 2700 evra je rast od 170%, a u naslov su stavili 300%.

 

[pbg12345]

a ko ce to da plati?

[ToniAdams]

i kako to tacno menja istoriju?

na osnovu naslova ocekivao sam nesto o vremeplovu.

[Sludge Factory]

Ok, da vidimo kako ce ovo da prodje

 

 

http://www.b92.net/biz/vesti/svet.php?yyyy=2017&mm=06&dd=07&nav_id=1269450

 

Jel ovo prvi put, u skorijoj istoriji makar, da neko pokusava sa anti ili kontra austerity merama? 

[MancMellow]

Jel ovo prvi put, u skorijoj istoriji makar, da neko pokusava sa anti ili kontra austerity merama? 

 

Videćemo kako će proći. I ako budu prošli loše - zašto, a ako budu prošli dobro - kako i zašto su 1) pribegli 2) mogli i smeli da pribegnu takvim merama