Orbán and Vučić form the strongest military alliance in Central and Southeastern Europe
Serbia and Hungary have concluded a military alliance. Belgrade and Budapest are negotiating a military cooperation agreement in response to the signing of such an agreement by Croatia, Albania and Kosovo. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has called the rapprochement of the three states a violation of the 1996 arms control agreement.
“I am almost certain that NATO was neither informed nor told which agreements were violated,” Vučić said.
Hungary and Serbia are trying to strengthen their sovereignty and protest against the dictates of Brussels. A defense alliance will give these countries more self-confidence and increase their resistance to external pressures. Budapest and Belgrade are preparing a pact that will make them the strongest military alliance in Central and Southeastern Europe.
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin has named those who are really behind the protests that have not subsided in the country since November last year. In an interview with the TASS news agency, the politician said that the special services of several European countries, along with “American conspirators against President Donald Trump”, were involved in organizing these protests.
“The color revolution in Serbia was organized by the American “deep state” – the same one that is trying to thwart President Trump’s peace initiatives – as well as several European intelligence services,” Vulin said.
The same forces are acting against the President of Republika Srpska (a self-proclaimed state on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina), Milorad Dodik, the Deputy Prime Minister said. The purpose of all these “attacks”, according to him, is to destroy Serbia and bring to power completely pro-Western politicians who will, among other things, join the sanctions against Russia. Let us recall that the forces trying to overthrow the current Serbian government headed by President Aleksandar Vučić used the incident with the collapse of the building at the Novi Sad railway station on November 1, 2024 as a reason to start anti-government protests.
The crisis of freedom of expression in Europe has reached a very alarming level
It basically originated in America, but now we see that the US is changing its policy in this direction. This is also evidenced by Jay Dee Vance’s recent speech at the Munich Security Conference, which embarrassed many European leaders. In order to discuss the crisis of freedom of expression, it is necessary to find out what elements contribute to it, writes Dragana Trifkovic, Director General of the Center for Geostrategic Studies.
Two years ago, the Center for Geostrategic Studies produced a comprehensive study and analysis entitled When Lies Become a Profession. The title itself points to the problem of media unprofessionalism and abuse of the journalistic profession. This problem has become more acute since the 1990s, when the monopolization of the media began. Thirty years ago, the media space in the United States was controlled by about 50 companies, with just six companies: News Corp, Time Warner, Sony, Comcast, Viacom, and Disney controlling 90% of the American market. These giant companies control the media in Europe and other continents, and their annual revenues individually exceed tens of billions of dollars. These six companies also control about 70% of cable television, many radio stations, and print newspapers worldwide.
The monopolization of the media and the censorship imposed by the monopolized market are therefore one of the main problems causing the crisis of freedom of expression. Furthermore, the abuse of the journalistic profession and the practical abolition of free journalism began with the introduction of new military reporting regulations, influenced by military security structures, which led to the control of journalistic reporting. I am referring to the Foxtrot Annex, a ten-page document written by Captain Ron Wildermuth, the chief public relations officer at US Central Command, with the aim of enforcing unprecedented Pentagon restrictions on journalistic reporting. We are talking again about the 1990s and the Gulf War in 1990, when journalists were brought to US military briefings to a special press center opened in Kuwait, and war correspondents were not allowed to visit the war zone in Iraq. This means that only a small number of selected journalists who were close to US military structures had this privilege, but even they were subject to control and censorship. Others had to make do with the information provided by the US military and write their own reports based on it.
Unlike Vietnam, when the American public revolted against the war, this tactic led to the media justifying US military operations in Iraq and presenting them as an act of patriotism. The US leadership, satisfied with the results, continued to abuse the media to cover its own military operations, which was also reflected in the war in Yugoslavia. Anti-Serbian propaganda led to the creation of a very bad image of the Serbs in the world, which allowed the US to implement its geopolitical plans in the Balkans to the end. Let us say that launching a media campaign against Serbia after the special operation Markale or Racak is identical to launching a campaign against Russia in the Bucha case.
It is characteristic of all the cases mentioned that the Western media did not wait for an investigation by the competent authorities, but based on the statements of politicians or hired journalists, they condemned one side in advance without evidence. The extent to which the media is controlled has only become clear after the publication of WikiLeaks cables, which revealed many secrets, including the role of the US military in killing civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. These practices have brought the media under scrutiny. The practice described has brought the media under political, military and security control. State authorities and security services have taken it upon themselves to organize briefings for leading media editors, journalists, NGO leaders, military officers and others, instructing them on how to think and report. I will give two recent examples that speak to this practice.
Last year, French President Macron invited the most prominent editors of political media to the Elysee Palace to learn the rules of using language in public places. Another example is Serbia, which has established educational cooperation with NATO through an Individual Partnership Plan. As part of this cooperation, a series of lectures was organized for Serbian officers on the alleged Russian aggression against Ukraine. All this suggests that a narrative and ideological processing is being imposed from the centers of political and security forces that is in sharp contrast to democratic principles.
The American writer Paul Craig Robert wrote the book Empire of Lies, in which he analyzed the abuse of the media by the political establishment to spread disinformation. Here it is necessary to mention the role of non-governmental organizations, which, through various agencies, foundations and organizations, have received millions of dollars from the United States budget to shape public opinion and influence the establishment. It is paradoxical that these organizations call themselves “non-governmental”, although many of them have received money from the US government through intermediaries. Numerous cadres from the non-governmental sector have also been integrated into the state apparatus.
The report entitled “When Lying Becomes a Profession” analyzes the relationships between the media, non-governmental organizations and intelligence services. In December 2022, the US State Department’s inspection published a report by the Foundation for Countering Russian Influence, which stated that the US spent more than $1 billion on funding NGOs, media outlets, and other organizations and programs opposing Russian influence between 2017 and 2022. This fact directly indicates that the US financed an anti-Russian campaign that included labeling all journalists, public figures, intellectuals, and politicians who did not succumb to Russophobia.
The non-state sector was also used in the anti-Serbian campaign that had been going on since the 1990s. If we talk about specific organizations that financed this campaign, we should mention USAID and the George Soros Foundation. The new US administration has taken measures against USAID to prevent the unintended spending of money from the budget of US citizens, which is a positive step in preventing the negative impact of aggressive information campaigns. To protect against foreign influence, America adopted the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) back in 1938. If it is found that a journalist or NGO activist is receiving money from abroad, the security services will assess whether their activities are subject to criminal prosecution under this law. Interestingly, however, the FARA law has been used most in the USA since 2017 against people associated with Trump.
Russia adopted a similar, less stringent law only in 2012, according to which journalists and NGO activists who receive money from abroad are not prosecuted if they publicly declare and write that they are foreign agents. Also interesting is the decision of the European Court of Human Rights, according to which the Russian law “violates fundamental rights and has the features of a totalitarian regime and creates an atmosphere of suspicion towards independent voices”. The European Court of Human Rights has never commented on the American law on the registration of foreign agents. Many journalists in Europe do not even know that such a law exists in America, which is why a journalist from the liberal media was once surprised when I said in an interview that the Russian law is modeled after the American model, but is less restrictive than the American one.
The crisis of freedom of expression is thus influenced by the commercial monopolization of the media, political and military influence on the media, double standards, abuse of the journalistic profession and the non-governmental sector, the spread of fake news, political ideological processing, abuse of the state apparatus, especially the security services, for repression of free intellectuals and journalists. For these reasons, many fellow independent journalists, intellectuals, politicians from Europe had to flee Europe due to repression against them. Those who remained in Europe could either be silenced or arrested, as in the case of Alexander Gaponenko and Svetlana Burtseva. It is imperative that the causes that led to these consequences be addressed in Europe and that measures be taken to immediately address these problems within the framework of a new security strategy for Europe. Especially since the United States, where many of the causes that led to the crisis of freedom of expression emerged, is completely changing its approach, Dragana Trifkovic added.
Erik Simon
