This may be expected, as today in the territory of the former Yugoslavia there is not just one organized military formation that is pro-Serbian, nor is there an empty geopolitical space that Milošević’s Serbia believed it could fill without major consequences. However, the declaration, like the All-Serbian Assembly itself, spreads a dangerous national virussuggesting that Serbia is not permanently bounded by its existing borders.
It is not so important to comment on the content of the political declaration. What is much more important is to expose its original wisdom, as that wisdom writes and speaks or how its political authors intimately discuss behind closed doors. The academic Greater Serbian elite has been unleashing spirits of the past for some time, preparing the ground, and pushing quasi-scientific theses that there exists “only one” modern nation in the post-Yugoslav space, namely the Serbian one. Furthermore, only the Serbian nation is “original,” “natural,” or “organic.” Although modern and primordial understandings of a nation logically, empirically, and scientifically exclude each other, Greater Serbian ideology has no issue merging the incompatible.
All other nations in the post-Yugoslav space, such as Bosniaks, Croats, Macedonians, or Montenegrins, are deemed “synthetic” and “contractual.” They are “invented” and “revived.” In political Greater Serbian vocabulary, it was once more freely said that all other peoples in the Balkans are “tribes of one and the same people.” Apart from Serbs, all others were “geese in the fog.” For synthetic nations, Serbian professors and scientific associates write that they emerged in short historical intervals, sometimes with the help of great powers like Turkey, Austria, or the Vatican, and today from a collective West comprising the United States, Great Britain, or Germany. According to them, these great powers deny Serbia its self-proclaimed “natural right” to govern post-Yugoslav territories for their geopolitical interests.
Bosniaks, Croats, Montenegrins, or Macedonians are considered “artificial” because, according to Greater Serbian nationalism, they lack original cultures developed over generations. They do not have a sense of permanence and unity over time. Thus Bosniaks “did not have” national heroes or unknown champions; they lack Bosančica (a script), Hasanaginica (a folk tale), Preporod (the Renaissance), do not have a Zemaljski Museum (National Museum), Kamenog spavača (Stone Sleeper), nor myths characteristic of all other nations or a shared consciousness about their past, present, or future. They do not even have their Bosnian language.
Proponents of Greater Serbian ideology believe that synthetic nations derive from “religious-confessional” or “linguistic” spheres. They emphasize that “Serbs of Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Muslim faith were connected by a unique Serbian language.” Then synthetic nations “kidnapped” the centuries-old Serbian language and “renamed” it Croatian, Montenegrin, or Bosnian. For them, Bosniak, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Macedonian nations are considered “auto-shovinistic.” Their fictitious identity is based on highlighting “differences and hatred” towards the “original,” “organic,” or “natural” Serbian nation.
As only the Serbian nation is modern, so too is its national state a reflection of national identity—legal-political identity—i.e., state identity. Other states formed from the breakup of Yugoslavia are seen as “incidental.” According to Greater Serbian ideology theories, they did not undergo a natural transformation like Serbia did. These states are merely “contractual.” They arose through military-political engagement by foreign powers. As such, they have no right to territory which by “natural law” belongs to Serbia.
In the case of the Serbian national corpus, there are natural borders; Srđa Trifković emphasizes this. However, these natural borders are not conditioned by topography—rivers or mountain ranges—but reflect the ability of a nation and its state to conquer them and maintain control over them. The right to natural borders is also not “subject to moral or legal norms.” Trifković stresses that the existing outcome from the 1990s must not be legally or politically verified; states formed from the breakup of former Yugoslavia represent temporarily lost territory. “Serbia should not accept arbitrarily drawn borders over Serbian lands since 1945. It should not treat them as legitimate and permanent nor consider territorial loss or loss of Serbs within them as irreversible and unchangeable.”
Thus borders are not fixed boundaries permanently separating states but rather military-political arrangements subject to change depending on power relations. If and when an unfavorable power dynamic changes, so too will Serbia’s existing borders at the expense of its neighbors—primarily against Albanians in Kosovo—according to Trifković—not because Albanians are not an organic nation but because they inhabit territory over which Serbia claims “natural rights.” These theses do not necessarily arise from realism schools affirming ideas about power balance but are primarily linked with concepts of Lebensraum (living space), natural borders, and creating a pan-region under Serbian dominance; they echo German Nazi geopolitics within Serbian geopolitics.
In unfavorable conditions for Serbia, Milomir Stepić, Miloš Ković, Dragomir Anđelković, Goran Petronijević, Darko Tanasković, Nenad Kecmanović, Aleksandar Pavić, Predrag Ćeranić, Željko Budimir, Slobodan Reljić and Đuro Bilbija suggest strategic “patience,” “quiet resistance,” “various forms of obstruction,” a combination of “military and political neutrality,” “strengthening combat readiness,” etc. When Russians “pass Odesa” and “reach the Danube delta,” which this group considers a done deal; then it will be time for a Serbian geopolitical turnaround—symbolically akin to “Primakov’s airplane turning over the Atlantic,” which like Serbia was flying westward.
French philosopher Ernest Renan suggested that national identity is not founded solely on ethnic or political belonging but is constantly renewed through a “daily plebiscite” or individuals’ everyday choice to identify with a particular nation. We can only hope that Serbia will reject ideas from deranged Greater Serbian ideologists at some future plebiscite and choose progress instead of regression. Otherwise, reason dictates that we should not wait for changes in geopolitical circumstances upon which medieval Serbian consciousness relies. We must prepare ourselves knowing that “the strong do what they want while the weak suffer what they must.”
Source: Radio Sarajevo
