euronews: Montenegro election: Who are the triumphant opposition factions and what do they stand for?

 Consisting of three blocs or alliances, For the Future of Montenegro, Peace is Our Nation and Black on White, the opposition won a wafer-thin majority with 50.7 per cent of the votes, or 41 out of 81 seats in the Montenegrin parliament. [...]

Despite the unifying goal of unseating the current DPS government and assurances that they are collectively committed to staying the course on issues such as EU integration, the rule of law and the overturning the DPS government's law on religious freedom, the opposition’s disparate values and agendas may mean that forming a viable alternative government is not an easy task.

One of the biggest challenges will be the reconciling of opposing pro-EU and pro-Serbia and Russia stances across the competing opposition alliances. The general opinion among voters tends to reflect an anxiety that ideological antagonisms will most likely be the source of any future instability within the new government.

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The Red Line: The Geopolitics of Kosovo

Kosovo has spent the last 2 decades fighting for its own independence, but with ever-increasing obstacles standing in their way will this mountainous nation ever achieve its lifelong dream? This week we take a look into the Western Balkans, Serbia's geopolitical aspirations, as well as Moscow's re-entry into an area it once viewed as its own backyard; and what it means for the future of the Kosovan people. On this episode Marija Ristic (Balkan Insight) Bodo Weber (Democratization Policy Council) Vessela Tcherneva (European Council on Foreign Relations) More info at www.theredlinepodcast.com Follow the show on @TheRedLinePod Or Michael on @MikeHilliardAus

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Politico: Foreign Dark Money Is Threatening American Democracy

The lack of transparency in our campaign finance system combined with extensive foreign money laundering creates a significant vulnerability for our democracy. We don’t know how much illicit money enters the United States from abroad or how much dark money enters American political campaigns, but in 2015, the Treasury Department estimated that $300 billion is laundered through the U.S. every year. If even a small fraction of that ends up in our political campaigns, it constitutes an unacceptable national security risk.

While foreign funding of campaigns is prohibited by federal statute, the body that enforces campaign finance laws – the Federal Election Commission (FEC) – lacks both teeth and resources. Sophisticated adversaries like Russia and China know how to bypass the ban on foreign funding by exploiting loopholes in the system and using layers of proxies to mask their activities, making it difficult for the FEC, the FBI, and the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to follow the money. [...]

The fact that we don’t know exactly how much foreign dark money is being channeled into U.S. politics is precisely why we need to reduce our vulnerabilities. There is ample evidence of dark money penetrating other democracies, and no reason to believe we are immune from this risk. In 2004, for example, Lithuania’s president was impeached after the media disclosed that a Russian oligarch who contributed to his campaign later received Lithuanian citizenship. Just this past January, in Montenegro, a local politician was charged with laundering Russian funds to support a pro-Russian political party. In Australia, an intelligence report leaked in 2017 exposed pervasive Chinese financial influence in the country’s domestic politics. Similar allegations recently surfaced in New Zealand.

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The New Yorker: “No Way to Run a Superpower”: The Trump-Putin Summit and the Death of American Foreign Policy

Days after the Helsinki summit, Trump’s advisers have offered no information—literally zero—about any such agreements. His own government apparently remains unaware of any deals that Trump made with Putin, or any plans for a second meeting, and public briefings from the State Department and Pentagon have offered no elaboration except to make clear that they are embarrassingly uninformed days after the summit. [...]

At the same time, the fragmentary evidence that has emerged, from the Russian comments and Trump’s various interviews, suggests there is reason for serious concern. In an interview on Fox, Trump questioned America’s commitment to the nato alliance’s Article 5 mutual-defense provision, disparaging the new nato member Montenegro as an “aggressive” little country that just might provoke us into “World War Three.” The criticism seemed to parrot Putin’s thinking on nato and Montenegro—where Russia mounted an unsuccessful coup attempt last year in an effort to block the country’s nato accession. The exchange left observers justifiably wondering if this was part of the agenda in the private Trump-Putin talks. Trump has also, in his tweets and other interviews, alluded to substantive discussions with Putin on issues such as Syria, where Trump is already on record as saying he wants to withdraw U.S. troops. If Trump, in fact, struck a secret deal with Putin in Helsinki to pull back U.S. troops from Syria, or otherwise limit the American presence, that would prove deeply controversial among many in his own party.  [...]

We are witnessing nothing less than the breakdown of American foreign policy. This week’s extraordinary confusion over even the basic details of the Helsinki summit shows that all too clearly. We may not yet know what exactly Trump agreed to with Putin, or even if they agreed to anything at all; perhaps, it will turn out, Putin and his advisers have sprung another clever disinformation trap on Trump, misleading the world about their private meeting because a novice American President gave them an opening to do so. But, even if we don’t know the full extent of what was said and done behind closed doors in Helsinki, here’s what we already do know as a result of the summit: America’s government is divided from its President on Russia; its process for orderly decision-making, or even basic communication, has disintegrated; and its ability to lead an alliance in Europe whose main mission in recent years has been to counter and contain renewed Russian aggression has been seriously called into question.

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Politico: 5 takeaways from EU’s big Balkan get-together

But French President Emmanuel Macron struck a skeptical note, insisting the EU should first focus on reforming itself before embarking on any more enlargement adventures. And a boycott by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy over the presence of Kosovo, which Madrid and four other EU capitals do not recognize, was a reminder of other divisions over the region.  [...]

Some leaders went further than the official text. Angela Merkel, who has emerged as a champion of the western Balkans, talked about “a clear membership perspective” and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz spoke about progress on the countries’ “path into the European Union.” But Macron preferred to talk about “anchoring” the western Balkans to Europe.[...]

Asked what she thought of the 2025 goal, Merkel was blunt. “I don’t think anything of this target date,” she told a news conference. “Membership must be based on factual progress. It’s not about a time horizon, it’s about what’s been achieved — on rule of law, on fighting corruption and other conditions such as border disputes.”

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Quartz: The world has a brand-new language, and it’s a win for nationalists

Since Serbia and Montenegro split into two countries in 2007, Montenegro has been pushing for recognition of Montenegrin as its own language. In 2011, Montenegro tried to differentiate itself by adding two extra letters to the Serbian alphabet. The National Library of Montenegro lobbied for nine years to be included in the list of ISO codes, which are used to identify languages in computing, archiving, databases, and more, before being accepted last week.

Yet according to the latest census, more people in Montenegro speak Serbian than Montenegrin. And anyway, the two language are barely different. They are mutually intelligible. And the overwhelming consensus among linguists is that Montenegrin and Serbian, as well as Bosnian and Croatian, are basically the same language. [...]

“Nationalism is increasing by introducing a purist approach towards language in schools and in media, because people, in relation to the choice of words, are trained to associate the term ‘good’ with their own nation, and the term ‘bad’ with other nations,” said Croatian linguist Snjezana Kordic, who has argued that the languages are one and the same.

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