Today, Montenegro marks twenty years since the restoration of its independence.
It is an important anniversary. But perhaps for that very reason, this is also the right moment to place several uncomfortable facts back into their proper political and historical context—without mythology, propaganda, or retrospective rewriting of history.
Montenegro was not created in 2006. It is one of the oldest internationally recognized states in the Balkans.
At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, Montenegro was recognized as a sovereign state among the first modern Balkan nations to receive full international legitimacy. The independence restored in 2006 was therefore not the creation of a new country, but the continuation of a European state that had been interrupted in its sovereignty.
Moreover, the modern international affirmation of Montenegrin independence did not begin in 2006. Nor did it begin in the late 1990s. It began in Washington, DC, in 1994.
At that time, Montenegro was still largely perceived around the world as an extension of the regime of dictator Slobodan Milošević. Both the Montenegrin prime minister, Milo Đukanović, and president, Momir Bulatović, then were part of the political structure aligned with Milošević’s regional agenda.
Precisely because they feared being internationally identified as participants in the wars and destructive nationalism consuming the Balkans in the mid-1990s, they asked me to open channels toward Washington—the city where, whether Europe liked it or not, the decisive Western policy toward the Balkans was actually being shaped.
At that time, I was a businessman based in London, but I had moved to Washington to make independence my strategic objective as Montenegro’s head of mission. It was obvious to me that Montenegro could not survive indefinitely within the model of isolation, sanctions, wars, and expansionist projects that devastated the Balkans during that fateful decade. Washington was where the real decisions were made—on sanctions, diplomatic pressure, peace initiatives, and the future architecture of the region.
My task was politically explosive but strategically simple: to convince the US administration, Congress, think tanks, and influential media that Montenegro did not have to remain permanently tied to Belgrade’s policies and that an alternative political path existed.
I remember one particularly important meeting in November 1994, in which I acted as translator, when then Senator Joe Biden directly warned the Montenegrin leadership that if they remained aligned with Milošević, they too risked becoming politically and legally associated with the consequences of his policies.
In 1996, I purchased what became known as the “House of Montenegro” in Washington at 1610 New Hampshire Avenue and placed the Montenegrin coat of arms on the building. At that moment, Montenegro was still not formally independent. Yet the symbolism was unmistakable: Montenegro was returning to the international stage under its own name and identity. Today, the Embassy of Montenegro stands at that address.
At the time, every attempt to politically differentiate Montenegro from Milošević’s policies provoked strong reactions in Belgrade.
It was precisely for that reason that, according to later published transcripts of secretly recorded telephone conversations between Milošević and Bulatović, then the Montenegrin president, Milošević demanded my urgent removal from Montenegro’s political circle of influence. Those conversations were later published in the book Slobodan Milošević: Anatomy of a Crime by Dušan Viro.
The reason was simple: In Washington, the idea of Montenegro as an independent political entity outside Belgrade’s control had begun to gain real traction.
Montenegro’s accession to the European Union is far more than a bureaucratic or economic question. It is a civilizational choice.
After the Kosovo crisis in 1999, a genuine international opening existed for Montenegro to move toward formal independence. But instead of accelerated separation, what followed was a continuation of political and economic symbiosis with Serbia—at a time when Serbia represented an enormous market for cigarette smuggling and parallel financial flows from which people close to the ruling circles in Podgorica greatly benefited.
By the late 1990s, Montenegro also began undergoing a deeper internal transformation. Instead of developing into an institutional state governed by the rule of law, political and economic power increasingly became concentrated within a narrow circle connected to the Đukanović family.
That was the moment when our political paths diverged, and I returned to London. The disagreement was not about independence, but what kind of state Montenegro should become.
Small states without strong institutions and wider international frameworks can easily become prey to corrupt elites, captured institutions, and private networks of power. Small states therefore require a larger institutional umbrella.
In the European context, that umbrella is above all the European Union. That is why I believe Montenegro’s accession to the European Union is far more than a bureaucratic or economic question. It is a civilizational choice.
I hope that through the completion of its EU accession process Montenegro will finally and irreversibly close the door to any possibility of again becoming part of a Serbian expansionist state project.
Because it was precisely that project—and no other—that represented the principal political, cultural, and geopolitical pressure upon Montenegro throughout the last century.
Its slogans changed. Its flags changed. Its political packaging changed. But the underlying ambition remained constant: the denial of full Montenegrin statehood and Montenegro’s right to determine its own future.
It is an ideology from the neighborhood that periodically returns, under new names and new political slogans, but always carrying the same impulse toward domination.
Montenegro belongs to the European and Mediterranean political space. And that is precisely why the ultimate purpose of Montenegrin independence cannot be a state owned by one family, one man, a narrow circle of vested interests—or held hostage by a backward nationalist ideology imported from the neighborhood.