NATO Invites Montenegro to Join Alliance

NYT ^ | May 19, 2016 | Steven Erlanger

[Berlin_Freeper]

NATO made a formal invitation on Thursday to tiny Montenegro to join the alliance as its 29th member. NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels signed the accession protocol under the eyes of the Montenegrin prime minister, Milo Djukanovic. The membership must be approved by all 28 national governments or parliaments, including the United States Senate.

When an informal invitation was made to Montenegro in December, Russia responded angrily.

Montenegro has a population of about 600,000 and little military capacity, but in December, Adm. Vladimir Komoyedov, the chairman of the Russian Parliament’s defense committee, said, “They are ready to admit even the North Pole to NATO just for the sake of encircling Russia.” The invitation to Montenegro, he said, means that NATO “was and remains an adversary of Russia.”

[Tijeras_Slim]

Can the The Duchy of Grand Fenwick be far behind?

[thoughtomator]

Anyone else think it’s a bad idea to get into a nuclear war over Montenegro?

[Tijeras_Slim]

3,2,1 before #blacklivesmatter says their name is racist.

[Berlin_Freeper]

LoL!

[thoughtomator]

I wish it were funny, but that’s exactly what accepting a new NATO member means - that we’re pledged to defend them even to the point of nuclear war.

[Berlin_Freeper]

More funny.

[mac_truck]

Anyone else think it’s a bad idea to get into a nuclear war over Montenegro?

I'll wager the average American doesn't even have a clue where Montenegro is much less think its a hill worth dying on.

This should get a thumbs down in Congress.

[DesertRhino]

Well this only makes good sense. Montenegro is obviously under threat of attack. And they have a giant military they can contribute.

[Berlin_Freeper]

There is a thing known as geopolitics.

[Joe 6-pack]

"In the Argonne Forest I took two machine-gun detachments so far forward that there was a half mile gap on either side of us where the infantry couldn’t advance. We stayed there two days and two nights, a hundred and thirty men with sixteen Lewis guns, and when the infantry came up at last they found the insignia of three German divisions among the piles of dead. I was promoted to be a major, and every Allied government gave me a decoration — even Montenegro, little Montenegro down on the Adriatic Sea!”

Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them — with his smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro’s troubled history and sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people. It appreciated fully the chain of national circumstances which had elicited this tribute from Montenegro’s warm little heart."

~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

[Fiji Hill]

Montenegro joined the Allies during WWI but was overrun by the Austro-Hungarians in the early weeks of 1916. This was one of the rare occasions in which the battleships of the Austro-Hungarian navy saw action as they bombarded targets on the shore.

[Oratam]

My first thought exactly!

[Verginius Rufus]

Admiral Komoyedov should look at the map and see where Montenegro is. How is adding Montenegro to NATO encircling Russia?

Montenegro did not become officially independent of the Ottoman Empire until 1878 but it had long been de facto independent. I think at one point they solved their Muslim problem by massacring all the Turks in Montenegro.

Milovan Djilas, the Yugoslav dissident, was Montenegrin. He wrote a book about the country called Land Without Justice. Nero Wolfe was also Montenegrin, but he was fictitious. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And don't forget Hugo Montenegro ("The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly").

[mac_truck]

There was a guy named Monte Irvin who played in the Negro leagues, then for the Giants and the Cubs.