The Deep Roots Of The War On Slovakia

Lately in the comments there has been a fair amount of discussion regarding the roots of the Neocon takeover of foreign policy going back to the Clinton regime. Of course it’s more complicated than I just stated it. There have always been the fanatical Cold Warriors who saw Reds under every bed. The Neocons certainly allied themselves with those old time “hawks”. However, it was during the Clinton years that avowed Neocons, like those who came in under Madeline Albright (Victoria Nuland was one of those), gained the ascendancy in policy matters.

Kit Klarenberg’s latest article at The Gray Zone reviews some of the issues that have been raised by the attempted assassination of Robert Fico, Prime Minister of Slovakia. Obviously, the biggest issue is whether the would be assassin was truly a “lone wolf” or whether he fronted for Western/Globalist interests, perhaps being manipulated by them. In that regard, Klarenberg notes the steady and extreme drumbeat of Western media outlets against Fico, labeling him a Putin puppet. He also discusses the apparent threat that was leveled at the Prime Minister of Georgia, who has also run afoul of the West. This threat, while not proof, certainly strongly suggests that there could be a larger story behind the attempted assassination of Fico:

Robert Fico’s failed assassination raises specter of Western plotting

One could be forgiven for concluding Western journalists take it as self-evident that defying EU/US will provides legitimate grounds for getting shot. Western politicians clearly do. On May 23rd, Georgian prime minister Irakli Kobakhidze revealed that EU commissioner Oliver Varhelyi warned him he could suffer the same fate as Fico, if his government didn’t drop a highly controversial “foreign influence transparency” law, which would compel local NGOs to disclose their sources of income.

After listing the various ways the EU could retaliate against Georgia in a phone call with Kobakhidze, Varhelyi allegedly stated: “Look what happened to Fico, you should be very careful.”

Varhelyi has since confirmed that he cited Fico’s fate in private conversations with Kobakhidze, but claimed he was merely concerned with “dissuading the Georgian political leadership” from adopting restrictions on foreign-funded NGOs. Varhelyi insisted in a written statement that he simply “felt the need” to caution the Prime Minister “not to enflame [sic] further the already fragile situation,” arguing that he only mentioned “the latest tragic event in Slovakia… as an example and as a reference to where such high levels of polarisation can lead in a society.”

While this is Klarenberg’s main focus, I want to draw attention to the concluding portion of the article. I can recall back that when Czechia and Slovakia agreed to an amicable divorce there were many voices in the West denouncing Slovakia as being to inclined to get along with Russia. Klarenberg takes us back to those days, suggesting that the moves that were launched agains Slovakia were a preparation for other regime change initiatives:

Regime change blueprint honed in Slovakia

The NED-organized overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia in 2000 established an insurrectionary blueprint which was subsequently exported in the form of color revolutions. But throughout  the 1990s, Slovakian activists honed the tactics which would eventually be deployed by US regime change operatives across the Soviet sphere. 

At the time, Bratislava [capital of Slovakia] was one of the only post-Communist countries that neither adopted ruinous neoliberal political and economic reforms, nor pursued EU or NATO membership. Slovakia’s then-Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar paid a harsh price for his independent stance. Relentlessly slandered by US and European leaders as a Russian pawn, he quickly became a target for regime change. 

In 1997, then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright publicly described Slovakia as “a black hole in the heart of Europe,” formally marking him for removal. So it was that NED funded the creation of Civic Campaign 98 (OK’98), a coalition of 11 anti-government NGOs.

Explicitly modeled on an earlier NED-funded effort in Bulgaria, concerned with “creating chaos” after the Socialist Party won the 1990 election, many of the individuals involved had been part of Cold War-era Czechoslovak anti-Communist dissident groups. OK’98 was publicly framed as a non-partisan get-out-the-vote campaign, but its vast resources were explicitly deployed for anti-government purposes. Its activities included rock concerts, short films, and TV infomercials in which Slovak celebrities urged young people to vote.

Meciar emerged with the most votes in the 1998 election, but the opposition gained enough seats to form a government. The NED assets who powered them to victory went on to give practical training to NED-supported pro-Western agitators like Pora, which ignited Kiev’s 2004 “Orange Revolution.” The insurrectionist youth group successfully overturned the re-election of President Viktor Yanukovych that year, installing the US-backed neoliberal Viktor Yushchenko in his place.

The return of Robert Fico represented a significant broadside against ongoing US “democratization” of the former Soviet sphere. It opened up the prospect of further anti-NATO candidates and governments gaining office elsewhere in Europe, at the most inconvenient juncture imaginable for Brussels and Washington. 

Not coincidentally, it was at this time polling for Germany’s upstart Alternative für Deutschland became turbocharged. The Euroskeptic party’s standing has soared in recent months, eliciting mainstream calls to ban it outright. And in North Macedonia just one week prior to Fico’s shooting, the anti-establishment VMRO-DPMNE party returned to power, overturning a NATO-fuelled color revolution that removed the party from office almost a decade earlier. 

As the anti-Western backlash gained steam, a decision may have been made to draw a bloody red line in Slovakia.

Now, admittedly, Klarenberg is painting with a broad brush here. Nevertheless, it does seem to me that there is a lot of smoke. Fire? One would be a fool not to consider that possibility. There’s too much history here to ignore.