Second SANU Memorandum: Destabilise neighbouring governments and provoke internal unrest

The Second SANU Memorandum is a document from 2012, created by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts – SANU as a strategic programme of the Serbian intelligentsia, recalls the Patria news agency.

Dobrica Ćosić, Ljubomir Tadić (father of the then President of Serbia) and a group of Serbian academics and writers are the authors of the Memorandum.

The Second SANU Memorandum in its content does not deviate at all from the already known Greater Serbian programmes (“Načertanije”, Serbs everywhere and all, Homogeneous Serbia..) it is merely modernised for its time. It is mostly aimed at remedying the damage that the failed aggression against Croatia and BiH, and the failed deconstitution of Kosovo, inflicted on the Greater Serbian project and Serbia's reputation. For the execution of this memorandum, the mission of the Serbian Orthodox Church was emphasised.

Two statements are a good description of the leitmotif of this second memorandum. The first is the one made by the father of Serbian politics of the second half of the 20th century, Dobrica Ćosić. In 2012, he told the Belgrade press “that the Serbs lost four wars in the 20th century (Slovenia, Croatia, BiH and Kosovo), but that in the 21st century they should look at how lost wars are won in peace”.

The second statement is that of Prof. Ljuba Tadić (father of Boris Tadić, then President of Serbia), who is not an insignificant independent intellectual, but one of the most prominent Serbian intellectuals: “We must never accept the military loss of the Serbian Krajina and the Slavonian lands, where Serbs were the majority, as a definitive loss. Those regions should never be considered lost, just as the Germans did not consider East Germany definitively lost. Not even in the constitution”.

The Second SANU memorandum was conceived in nine points. It excluded violence and “battles that can also be armed”. The nine points of the second memorandum are:

1. Reduce Serbia's responsibility for committed crimes and destruction, and through indictments, arrest warrants and staged judicial processes against citizens of BiH, Croatia and Kosovo, place it on an equal footing with neighbouring countries.

2. Divert the attention of regional and international media from the final trials of former members of the Serbian political, intelligence and military leadership and the political leadership of the Republika Srpska being tried at the Hague Tribunal.

3. Bring neighbouring countries BiH, Croatia and Kosovo into a position to abandon lawsuits announced before international courts.

4. Through acts of contrition, bring Serbia into an equal position with the victimised and damaged neighbouring countries.

5. Insist on the closure of the Hague Tribunal and on the trial of General Ratko Mladić before the domestic judiciary.

6. Destabilise the governments of neighbouring countries, provoke internal discontent and unrest, and weaken the edge of accusations against Serbia.

7. Assist the secession of Republika Srpska.

8. Insist on the constituent status of Serbs in Croatia, Montenegro and Kosovo and carry out the transition of Serbian communities in the countries of the region into a unitary, all-Serb community.

9. Stop the separation of Vojvodina, prevent further regionalisation of Serbia and weaken the activities of the Islamic Community in Sandžak.

A special chapter of this memorandum deals with eastern Croatia, Republika Srpska and northern Kosovo. In foreign policy, the authors proposed that Serbia turn towards China in military and political terms, given the fact that Russia does not support Serbia as it once did.

This secret Greater Serbian state document was created several years ago within the circle of Serbian academics from Belgrade, decisively defines strategic Greater Serbian goals and gives detailed instructions to the political leadership of Republika Srpska and Serbia on how to operationalise them.