Montenegro clears hurdle to Nato entry

Montenegro clears hurdle to Nato entry
US Secretary of State congratulates then premier Milo Djukanovic on the signing of Montenegro's accession protocol. / Photo: CC
By Clare Nuttall in Bucharest December 7, 2016

Montenegro took a step closer to Nato entry on December 6, when members of the US Senate foreign relations committee voted unanimously in favour of ratifying the country’s accession protocol - defying fears that Montenegro’s Nato accession could fall victim to the more isolationist stance of president-elect Donald Trump.

Now the legislation on Montenegro’s Nato accession has been cleared by the committee, backers of the country’s entry to the alliance hope it will be passed by the current US Senate before its term expires in January.

Montenegro received its long sought after invitation to join Nato in December 2015, and in May this year Nato foreign ministers signed the protocol on the country’s accession to the alliance. Since then, Montenegro has been able to participate in meetings as an observer, but it will only become a full member after the protocol is ratified by the parliaments of all member states.

“Once all of the 28 allies have ratified the accession protocol Montenegro can accede to the Washington treaty and become a full member of the Atlantic alliance, which will also confer upon Montenegro the same decision-making powers as all other allies,” a Nato official told bne IntelliNews as Nato foreign ministers gathered in Brussels for their first summit since Trump’s election.

At a press conference on December 5, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg expressed confidence that Podgorica was on course to join the alliance, but told journalists that he was not able to say exactly when Montenegro would become a full member as “this is up to the different national parliaments”.

So far 14 allies have completed their parliamentary ratification of the accession protocol, and they do not include the US. While approval of the accession protocol previously seemed like a formality, in the increasingly unpredictable foreign policy environment following Trump’s election this is no longer the case.

In the run-up to the election, Trump several times called into question the US’s support for Nato, in particular criticising member states that failed to meet their commitment to spend the full 2% of their GDP on defence. This struck fear into some members from the CEE region, with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis saying on November 29 that Bucharest would hike defence spending to the required level even if this risked raising the budget deficit above the 3% limit set by for EU member states.

It’s not clear exactly what Trump’s foreign policy is going to involve - not least because he hasn’t picked a secretary of state yet - however, it does seem the US will be stepping back from its interventionist foreign policy, and concentrating more narrowly on what the new administration perceives as its national self interest. It’s already clear that the new administration won’t be shy about changing policy, as shown when Trump took a congratulatory call from Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen - breaking with almost four decades of diplomatic tradition.

To what extent Trump wants to draw back from Nato is unclear, but if his administration decides it will take a step back from supporting the alliance, Montenegro’s accession could be where it decides to draw the line.

Lame duck

Before the vote there were rumours from Washington of delays to adoption of the protocol within the committee. Roll Call, a website dedicated to covering the US Congress, quoted Democratic sources as speculating that the committee’s chairman Bob Corker - reportedly one of Trump’s potential picks for secretary of state - was behind the delays.

US Democrats have urged the adoption of the protocol before Trump takes office. “[W]e still have time to get it done in this lame duck session of Congress. It’s up to the Republican leadership to allow that to happen … If we don’t, we play right into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hands,” Democratic senator Benjamin Cardin said in an interview with Roll Call.

However, the committee backed the resolution unanimously, and Corker said members welcomed Montenegro as Nato’s newest member, although he went on to echo Trump in adding that “it is important that every state step up and meet the 2 percent of GDP target for spending on defence”.

US ratification of Montenegro’s accession could be a setback to Trump’s stated desire to reset relations with Russia, which has been vehemently opposed to its former ally Montenegro’s entry to Nato.

There have also been a growing number of calls from rightwing commentators and think tanks not to allow Montenegro into the alliance.

In a strongly worded article for Forbes, Doug Bandow, a former adviser to ex US President Ronald Reagan and now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, said that the “lame duck Senate” shouldn’t ratify the entry of “corrupt, military midget Montenegro” into Nato, which would be an act of “defence charity”. Bandow’s former Cato Institute colleague, now foreign policy scholar at another think tank Defence Priorities, Charles V. Peña, asks “Does Nato need Montenegro?”, concluding that “it doesn’t.”

Meanwhile, L. Todd Wood, a staffer at the conservative Washington Times has written articles on this theme for both his own publication and for Real Clear World, as has Jim Jatras, a former foreign policy adviser to the Senate’s Republican leadership, for Chronicles Magazine. The previously obscure Jatras came to prominence in 2015 when he lobbied the Republican presidential hopefuls to pick him as their vice president.

The articles have several things in common; they warn of Montenegro’s lack of usefulness to the US as a Nato member by stressing the tiny size of its army (just 2,000 people), its corruption, and questioning whether Washington needs to poke the Russian bear on this issue.

Meanwhile, the re-elected government in Podgorica is as keen as ever to progress towards accession to Nato. After being voted in by the parliament on November 28, the country’s new Prime Minister Dusko Markovic said that his government’s top priorities would be membership of the EU and Nato. “The government that you are electing today will complete the country’s integration to Nato,” he pledged in his address to the parliament.

Montenegrin officials have repeatedly warned that Russia - the country's former close ally - is trying to undermine its integration with Nato. In the run up to the alliance’s decision on whether to issue an invitation to Montenegro in 2015, then prime minister Milo Djukanovic openly accused Russia of trying to stir up opposition protests to present an image of instability. As this year’s elections approached, he claimed that Moscow was funding the Democratic Front and other opposition parties.

Prosecutors have also claimed that “Russian nationalists” were behind an alleged coup attempt that was foiled on the eve of the election. Meanwhile, both the DF and the Russian Duma’s deputy speaker Sergei Zhelezhnyak have accused Montenegro’s ruling Democratic Party of Socialists of staging the attempt in order to push up its share of the vote.

Montenegrin political analyst Zlatko Vujovic told bne IntelliNews in advance of the October 16 vote that the election had become a referendum on whether Montenegro’s future lay with Russia or Nato. The verdict, albeit narrowly, appeared to be in favour of the latter, but it may no longer be up to Podgorica to determine whether this goal can be achieved. 

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