To have taken U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign promises seriously, one would have believed that the United States would cease its constant attempts to replace governments it does not like with compliant regimes through the counter-democratic process of provoking «themed» or «color» revolutions.
As global interventionists and neo-conservatives continue to worm their way into the Trump administration, U.S. policy in the Balkans under Trump is not much different than it was under Barack Obama.
Donald Trump castigated the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign for its close ties to hedge fund multi-billionaire George Soros and favoring intervention in other countries to bring about «regime change».
However, President Trump is now carrying out Soros-directed «color revolutions» in Macedonia and Serbia, two nations with friendly ties to Russia. Moreover, rather than «drain the swamp» of Soros operatives, Trump ensured that a former Soros employee, Steve Mnuchin, now serves as the Secretary of Treasury. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who exercises Svengali-like power over Mr. Trump, is known to be close to organizations financed by Soros.
Publicly, Soros has called Trump a con-man and a would-be dictator. Privately, what is occurring in Macedonia and Serbia is an attempt by Soros, working with Mike Pompeo’s Central Intelligence Agency, to overthrow democratically-elected governments in both countries and replace them with pro-NATO and globalist-oriented puppet regimes of the United States and the European Union.
Trump eagerly sought to ratify Montenegro’s membership in NATO, even though the parliamentary opposition in the country and many of its supporters recall that NATO bombed their nation in 1999.
Soros-financed media operations in the Balkans and abroad concocted a «fake news» story about a Russian plot to stage a coup in Montenegro against the pro-NATO former prime minister, Milo Djukanovic. Similar fake news stories by Soros are designed to paint the anti-NATO political parties in Macedonia and Serbia as agents of Moscow. The Trump administration, which has shown no capability to discern fact from fancy, has bought into all of these conspiracy theories.
The current joint CIA/Soros destabilization campaign is not only targeting the governments of Macedonia and Serbia, but also the Srpska Republic of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Federation. The CIA efforts are, according to the Macedonian newspaper «Dnevnik», part of an overall program code-named OPERATION WIZARD OF OZ.
The operation is reportedly being staged from a joint CIA-British MI6 special station in Milan. The short-term goal of WIZARD OF OZ is to replace governments friendly to Russia in Macedonia, Serbia, and the Srpska Republic.
The Russian Foreign Ministry and Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto have particularly condemned Soros’s involvement in Macedonia’s destabilization. Szijjarto said that «far-away countries», meaning the U.S. and Britain, have been responsible for recent violent demonstrations in Macedonia.
The CIA and Soros want to ensure that the Macedonian nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party and its leader, former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, who was forced out of office amid Soros- and CIA-financed street demonstrations in 2016, and President Gjorge Ivanov are ousted. Soros and the CIA have groomed the pro-NATO and EU and anti-Russian Social Democratic leader Zoran Zaev to replace the VMRO-DPMNE.
Likewise, Soros has groomed several acolytes in Skopje to take over the presidency from Ivanov. There are plans afoot to eventually purge the VMRO-DPMNE from Macedonian politics in the same manner that the U.S. neocons destroyed the Ba’ath Socialist Party in Iraq and the pro-Russian Party of Regions in Ukraine. The VMRO-DPMNE is the successor to the anti-Ottoman Macedonian political party, also called the VMRO, during the period of Ottoman occupation of Macedonia.
The Trump administration has formed a tacit alliance with the radical Islamist government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who Trump personally congratulated for winning a corrupted referendum in Turkey, by which Erdogan has now seized virtual dictatorial powers.
Trump’s sacked national security adviser, retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, had a contract with Erdogan’s government, which included offering a plan to kidnap exiled Turkish opposition leader Fethulleh Gulen from Pennsylvania to Turkey, where he would face certain execution.
A result of the Trump-Erdogan alliance is the empowerment of pro-Turkish Albanian nationalists in countries like Macedonia to seize more power. Erdogan hopes to increase the influence of Albanian Muslims throughout the Balkans in an attempt to re-create a form of the Ottoman Empire’s foothold in southeastern Europe.
On April 27, 2017, VMRO-DPMNE supporters stormed the Macedonian parliament to protest the appointment of an ethnic Albanian, who represents the Albanian Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) party. Some 100 of the VMRO-DPMNE protesters were injured by riot police. The Albanian party has demanded that Albanian be made one of the two official languages of Macedonia, something that the Slavic Macedonian-speakers have rejected because Albanians represent only 15 percent of the Macedonian population.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who has faced street protests similar to those taking place in Macedonia over his re-election, sees a wider conspiracy by Soros and the West to undermine Balkans stability. Although Vucic won re-election with 55 percent of the vote, Soros groups charge that the vote was rigged and that Vucic and his Serbian Progressive Party stole the election.
As in Macedonia, the Soros groups, backed by the CIA, are demanding that the Serbian Progressive Party government resign along with Vucic.
The Soros groups are now trying to paint Vucic as another Slobodan Milosevic, the same personalized demonization ploy that Soros has attempted with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and, before he began toeing the neocon and globalist line, Trump.
Campaigns of painting political leaders as «Hitlers» and «genocidal killers» were refined by the CIA, working with Soros, to target not only Serbia’s Milosevic but also Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Macedonian authorities have discovered that recent successive CIA regime change operations have their own code-name: UMBRELLA.
Trump now routinely bashes Assad using the typical neocon and Soros rhetoric, something that likely does not sit too well with First Lady Melania Trump, a native of Slovenia, who has often spoken out in nostalgic terms about her native former Yugoslavia, the first post-Cold War target of the neocons and Soros.
Another target of the neocons, Soros, and the Trump White House is Srpska Republic leader
Milorad Dodik, who has also faced protests. There are demands from the Muslim-dominated Bosnia-Herzegovina federation government in Sarajevo for Dodik and his Serbs to give up constitutionally-guaranteed autonomy of the Srpska Republic and start taking orders from Sarajevo and cut ties with the Serbian government in Belgrade. Serbia and Russia have come to Dodik’s defense and warned Sarajevo and its masters in the EU and NATO against any attempt to curtail the Srpska Republic’s self-government.
Vucic is well-aware that before he left as CIA director, John Brennan visited Tirana, Albania on December 7, 2016, to give a green light for the establishment of a «Greater Albania» incorporating the Republic of Albania, Kosovo, Albanian regions of Macedonia, and Albanian pockets in Montenegro.
The action would likely spell the end of Macedonia, with the remaining portions of the nation being absorbed by Serbia and Bulgaria. The first step of OPERATION WIZARD OF OZ is to federalize Macedonia and change the name of the country to placate Greece, which objects to its use, prior to absorbing Macedonia into the EU and NATO.
After federalization, a process will then be initiated to attack the majority Albanian regions of the country to Kosovo. Greater Albania would become an important religious, military, and political ally of Erdogan’s recreated Ottoman Empire.
The plan by Soros, the CIA, NATO, and the EU for a Greater Albania now has the active support of Pompeo and the neocons within the Trump administration, including national security adviser and one-time General David Petraeus understudy Lt. General H. R. McMaster, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher, the chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Europe and Eurasia has already spelled out the Trump administration’s policies toward Macedonia and the creation of Greater Albania. He told his committee in February of this year, «The Kosovars… and the Albanians in Macedonia should become part of Kosovo,» while the rest of Macedonia should become part of Bulgaria or other countries».
Rohrabacher also said it his wish to alter the borders in the Balkans. U.S. Senator John McCain, who displays a psychopathic disdain for Russia, recently visited Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. McCain’s discussions in the region also touched on the potential redrawing of borders. McCain, Rohrabacher, and like-minded neocons within the Trump administration are playing in dangerous waters in the Balkans. What makes the situation more dangerous, Trump has apparently given the green light for such a continuation of Obama-era troublemaking.
WAYNE MADSEN | SCF
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/05/03/for-balkans-trump-no-different-than-obama.html