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The process of Montenegro's accession to NATO was launched right after the declaration of independence in 2006. The republic's elites saw entering the EU and NATO as their main foreign policy objectives.
Montenegrin accession to NATO is directly aimed against Russia and Serbia. Actually, it is a part of Serbian linguistic and cultural space. Montenegrins are a distinct part of the Serbian people and Serbia traditionally is the most Continentalist country in the region. It occupies the inner Heartland of the Balkans and has always tried to fulfill the imperial mission of domination in its zone like its brother in the Big Heartland – Russia.
All Serbian conflicts with its neighbors are provoked not only by ethno-religious causes, but also by natural Serbian aspirations to gain access to the sea. Montenegro and Dalmatia are a main priority in this strategy of Greater Serbia. This is why western Atlanticist geostrategists supported the partition of Yugoslavia and the creation of independent states of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro, forming borders that completely cut Serbia and its Continental ally Russia off from the Adriatic coast.
For a decade Russia invested billions of dollars in the economy of Montenegro, seeking to simultaneously tie the state to Moscow. Where Atlanticists had a deep strategy, including propaganda, NGO-networks, work with elites and transmitting their discourse through media to the masses, Moscow relied only upon its money. The investments did not bring anything. The incompetence of Russia’s previous strategy was shown by the fact that when the anti-NATO protest started, Russian media for some weeks even did not try to cover it.
The accession to NATO also has a symbolic goal. It is an assault on the collective, national memory. The majority of the country's population remembers that NATO bombed Yugoslavia in 1999. The forcible incorporation of Montenegro into NATO should break the mentality of Montenegrins, provoke Stockholm syndrome and therefore prepare the path for Serbian integration into NATO.
Thousands of people protest on the streets in Montenegro’s cities against the integration process. The half of the country’s population that strongly oppose the accession to NATO have also been influenced by a variety of conservative, Orthodox, pro-Serbian and pro-Russian groups from the very beginning of the process, and these were speaking out against entering the US-led military block; seeing it as a form of civilizational and political treason to Montenegrin history and heritage. One of the key personalities in the anti-NATO movement is Orthodox Metropolitan bishop of Montenegro and the Littoral Amphilochius. He has called the alliance a terrorist organization and stressed that Montenegrin people should not participate in it under any circumstances.
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