Jumping To Conclusions

The president of Montenegro is arguing that the European Union is trying to sabotage democracy in his region:

A destabilizing, anti-reform coalition supported by certain bureaucracies of the European Union is threatening to set back the progress of democracy in Montenegro.

Since the signing in March of the Belgrade agreement on a new Serb-Montenegrin union, a combination of forces within Yugoslavia has tried to hijack the negotiation process and force Montenegro into a tighter Serbian orbit. Among these forces are loyalists of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, militants supporting the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, Radovan Karadzic, Liberal Party leaders and various members of Yugoslav security services.

Now this anti-democratic axis has managed to gain the ear of some political circles in Brussels and in some Western European countries. These policymakers naively believe that pushing out the current pro-Western government in Montenegro will ensure stability by preventing Montenegro from gaining self-determination and national independence -- an option that the two republics can, under the Belgrade agreement, exercise after three years.

For several months the EU bureaucracy in Brussels has in effect tried to rewrite the agreement. Its ostensible goal is to establish uniformity within the Serb-Montenegrin union, but in practice this has meant pushing for Montenegro's economic subordination to Belgrade, even though the aspiring state has a much more liberal economy than Serbia, is increasingly well prepared for free trade with the outside world and has adopted the euro as its currency.

I don't know the facts of the case, but the charges certainly seem plausible. After all, hasn't that been the EU's position with regard to Yugoslavia all along? And isn't that the EU's position with regard to Iraq? And with regard to the PLO? And, hell, with regard to France?

The EU is terrified of actually doing anything -- besides, perhaps, regulating ketchup. They're good at such things. As long as there's "stability," the most they'll ever have to do is write a check. So who cares if a bunch of Israelis get blown up, or Kurds get gassed, or Bosnians get shot? As long as there's a big foreign bureaucracy for the Brussels crowd to deal with, they're happy. As I've pointed out before, the EU itself is fundamentally anti-democratic, with the real power lying with unelected bureaucrats who want to centrally plan everything. So why should we be surprised if these charges turn out to be true?