Tag Archives: Croatia

Editor’s Pick, Featured, Foreign Policy, International, US

NATO Unveils Expansion Plans, Invites Montenegro

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by Jason Ditz

Far from the Atlantic and not particularly northerly, the tiny Balkan nation of Montenegro has formally been invited today to join NATO, as part of what the alliance is presenting as an ongoing growth strategy. A nation of 600,000 people, Montenegro first made efforts to secure an invite nine years ago.

NATO last expanded in 2009, with the admission of Albania and Croatia. Montenegro is one of four nations that had been actively seeking membership. Among the others, Bosnia and Herzegovina seems the only realistic potential member, as Georgia’s existing territorial disputes would preclude membership and Greece doesn’t want to allow Macedonia in because of their name. Ukraine has also recently talked up seeking membership, but similarly has outstanding territorial disputes.

Russia has objected to NATO’s repeated expansions in the past two decades, with those expansions absorbing the bulk of their former Warsaw Pact allies, and sees the continued expansion as a deliberately provocative move aimed at ultimately “surrounding” Russia.

With its accession, Montenegro will be the third smallest active military within NATO, larger only than Iceland and Luxembourg. With no active warplanes and only two active patrol boats, the addition to the alliance will be trivial to the broader balance of power between NATO and Russia.

Featured, International

UN courts dismiss claims of genocide between Serbia and Croatia

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The highest court within the UN has ruled the acts of war committed by Croatia and Serbia against the other’s population in the 1990’s does not qualify as genocide.

The International Court of Justice says they recognize acts of rape, torture, and widespread killings had taken place between the two countries, but by the formal definition of genocide, no such act was carried out during the conflict.

According to the official report, genocide implies there is a laid out plan to systematically wipe out an entire population of peoples and to prevent any further births from occurring within the targeted population. While the acts of war carried out were brutal, the court claims there was no such plan on either side.

According to NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, the decision should come as no surprise since the “U.N. courts have never charged any Serbs or Croats with genocide in each other’s territory.”

“The Croatian government alleged that Serbia committed genocide in the town of Vukovar and elsewhere in 1991,” said Nelson. “Tens of thousands of ethnic Croats were displaced, and hundreds of Croat men were detained and killed. Serbia later filed a counterclaim over the expulsion of more than 200,000 Serbs from Croatia.”

Peter Tomka, the president of the International Court of Justice, said, according to Reuters, “Croatia has not established that the only reasonable inference was the intent to destroy in whole or in part the (Croatian) group.”

Tomka went on to say the desire to expel ethnic groups from towns and cities does not constitute genocide since the intention is not to destroy the groups. This also led Tomka to say Serbia’s counterclaim of genocide did not met the definition either, and therefore denied the country’s claim. 

The foreign minister of Croatia, Vesna Pusic, said, according to the New York Times, she hoped this ruling would help bring a “better and safer period for people in this part of Europe.” Justice Minister Nikola Selakovic of Serbia echoed these hopes.

Economy, Politics, US

Former Nazis receive Social Security payments from US government

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After WWII, many Nazis made an exodus out of Germany, and found themselves embedded in countries all over the world, including the US.  Now, an investigation has found Nazis who came to America have been collecting Social Security payments, even after they have left the US for other countries.

The Associated Press found that through a legal loophole, the US Justice Department would allow the former Nazis to continue to collect their Social Security payments if they agreed to leave the US or fled before they were deported.  According to the investigation, about $1.5 million had been paid out to former Nazis through this loophole by the turn of the century.

Out of at least 38 Nazis who came to the US after 1979 and began collecting social security payments, about four remain alive, and they all are rumored to live in Europe.

Jakob Denzinger is one of these former Nazis collecting payments while living in Croatia.  Denzinger was a guard at the notorious prison camp Auschwitz, and moved to Ohio after the war where, according to RT, he started his own plastic company.

Denzinger reportedly collects about $18,000 a year from Social Security, but he would not comment on these new developments.  Thomas, Denzinger’s son who lives in the US, did say his father would not give up his benefits because he “paid into the system.”

The Social Security Administration would not disclose information regarding the use of benefits to try and drive the former Nazis out of the country.

Agency spokesman Peter Carr said, “The matter of Social Security benefits eligibility was raised by defense counsel, not by the department, and the department neither used retirement benefits as an inducement to leave the country and renounce citizenship nor threatened that failure to depart and renounce would jeopardize continued receipt of benefits.”

However, even though the SSA denies paying former Nazis to leave the US, a piece of legislation in 1999 was meant to stop all benefits from reaching former Nazis, whether they were American citizens or not.  This legislation failed to pass at the time, but these new developments might raise the issue again.