In an op-ed piece for the Boston Herald, the former President of Serbia, Boris Tadic, said that the conflict over Ukraine is the sign of inconsistency which is at the heart of Western foreign policy, because when it comes to Ukraine the West’s position is that territorial integrity is “sacrosanct,” while this rule does not apply for the other nations, such as Serbia,.
Tadic also wrote that the dual standards were established officially back in 2010 when the International Court of Justice failed to provide a non-binding advisory opinion on “whether Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence is in accordance with international law.”
Tadic recalled that, during his term in office, he had warned that the precedent with Kosovo would ignite hotspots worldwide, and he particularly warned about Ukraine.
“Then, as now, Serbia’s territorial integrity and the views of its citizens — who remain resolutely attached to their nation’s heartland and identity — were, apparently, irrelevant,” Tadic wrote.
According to him, the President of Russia is to blame for invading Ukraine but, Tadic noted, he did not open Pandora’s box of “relativizing respect for the territorial integrity.”
“Western contradictions have added weight to his claim of double standards, and unfortunately it is heard with sympathy in many corners of the world even in the midst of the horrors of the Ukrainian war. Indeed, those contradictions puncture the West’s greatest advantage — its moral authority — at a very time when other great and rising powers are starting to match the West’s influence. And that makes another Ukraine somewhere else more likely,” he concluded.
(Nedeljnik, 03.07.2022)
https://www.nedeljnik.rs/tadic-dvostruki-standardi-zapada-prema-srbiji-i-ukrajini/
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