In Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, a military unit is sent behind enemy lines to save one soldier. Beyond the story of rescue, the film raises a difficult question: what price should an entire system pay to protect one individual?
Montenegro is witnessing its own, less heroic operation. Its title could be Saving Private Spajić.
The controversy surrounding documents allegedly connecting Prime Minister Milojko Spajić to the reserve forces of the Serbian Armed Forces has revealed more than another disputed episode from his biography. It has exposed the architecture through which political leverage is created and exercised in Montenegro.
The available documents did not establish that Spajić voluntarily joined the Serbian military or remained part of its reserve forces. After acknowledging his Serbian citizenship and requesting release from it in February 2023, he apparently had to regulate his military service status before the procedure could be completed. His release from Serbian citizenship was documented in June 2023.
Yet the politically important question is not limited to what the documents prove. It is how records originating from the institutions of one state became political capital in another.
As I argued in Networks of Leverage: Serbian Influence and Democratic Vulnerability in Montenegro, a document does not need to substantiate the allegation attached to it in order to exercise coercive power. It only needs to appear authentic enough to generate uncertainty, serious enough to impose reputational costs, and available to a domestic intermediary capable of timing and amplifying its disclosure.
At that point, information becomes leverage.
This is characteristic of the present phase of Serbian influence. Belgrade no longer relies exclusively on ideological affinity, open political sponsorship or a unified bloc of loyal actors. It operates through a differentiated network of political proxies, Serbian-state-aligned media, opaque financial channels, organised digital networks, clerical structures and domestic brokers.
Some of these actors remain directly responsive to Belgrade. Others seek greater autonomy while continuing to depend on Serbian media access, institutional information, financing or ecclesiastical legitimacy. The system does not require their complete loyalty. It only requires the capacity to determine the cost of their disobedience.
The Spajić case illustrates proxy-enabled coercion. Administrative records, business documents, correspondence, recordings or selectively edited material can be acquired and circulated through intermediaries. Some may be authentic, others manipulated. Their coercive value lies partly in the target’s inability to know what else exists, who possesses it and when it might be released.
The threat does not have to be stated openly. It can produce anticipatory compliance: political behaviour adjusted in advance because the target understands that the cost of autonomy may be activated at any moment.
From this perspective, Belgrade may have little interest in removing Spajić. A weakened prime minister, dependent on parties connected to Serbia and conscious that Serbian institutions may possess additional information about him, can be more useful than his replacement. Political leverage is not always exercised to destroy its target. Often, it is used to keep that target governable.
This also makes the operation to save Spajić politically ambiguous. Some actors defend him to preserve governmental stability. Others may protect him because his vulnerability preserves their own influence. The same network can increase pressure against the prime minister, regulate that pressure and then present itself as indispensable to his political survival.
Protection and coercion are not opposites within a leverage system. They are complementary instruments.
This system functions through institutional grey zones. A Serbian administrative record may be genuine while the political interpretation attached to it is deceptive. A portal may be registered in Montenegro while depending on Serbian financing or editorial content. Apparently spontaneous volunteers may provide professionally organised campaign services. Each activity may appear lawful when examined separately. Their coordination and cumulative effect reveal an infrastructure of influence.
Montenegrin institutions remain poorly equipped to recognise this conversion. Citizenship is treated as an administrative issue, a document leak as a media controversy, political financing as an accounting question and coordinated online activity as spontaneous public opinion. By separating the individual incidents, institutions fail to see the network.
The response should therefore be neither the automatic condemnation of Spajić nor his unconditional protection. The documents, their origin, chain of custody and route into Montenegro’s political arena must be independently examined. Institutions should determine who obtained them, who selected the timing of their publication and whether their circulation was connected to any appointment, coalition decision or foreign-policy position.
This is not an argument against Serbian identity, religious practice or legitimate political cooperation with Serbia. Democratic self-defence must be directed against concealed foreign direction, opaque financing, coordinated deception and the use of private information or dependency to restrict political choice.
The central question is therefore larger than Spajić. Can Montenegro protect the constitutional autonomy of its institutions without protecting individual politicians from accountability? And can a NATO member and EU candidate continue allowing documents controlled by another state and circulated through domestic proxies to shape its most important political decisions?
In Spielberg’s film, Private Ryan is told that he must live a life worthy of the price paid to save him. Montenegro should ask its own, less sentimental question.
If the state is mobilised to save Private Spajić, what exactly is being protected: the constitutional authority of Montenegro’s prime minister—or the vulnerability that makes him easier to control?
And who will present the bill when the rescue operation is over?
Danilo Kalezic. Montenegrin political scientist
The articles published in the “Opinions” column reflect the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the position of the Center
