The President of the Atlantic Alliance of Montenegro, dr. Savo Kentera, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs at State Department, Matthew A. Palmer, will be present at the inaugural opening of this leading annual conference. The Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic will officially open the Forum.
"This year's 2BS Forum will gather more than 400 participants from all around the world, including presidents, prime ministers, defense ministers, foreign ministers and other senior officials from Southeast European countries, US and EU officials, analysts, academic community representatives, experts from the field of security policy, media, and more. The special importance of the conference relates to the fact that the Forum is organized just before the first anniversary of Montenegro's membership in NATO," said the Atlantic Alliance.
The Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic will be the principal speaker of the first panel, which will discuss the central issue of the 8th Forum, the political-security situation in the Western Balkans, a region that has again become the sphere of interest of the key decision-makers in the international community.
"The fact is that there has been significant progress in the region since the wars of the 1990s to European and Euro-Atlantic integration, but progress has been slower than expected due to unresolved issues from the past. Serbia and Montenegro started negotiations on approaching the European Union, and could, as stated in the recently published EU enlargement plan, become members by 2025. Montenegro's entry into NATO shows that the door remains open to other countries in the region. However, it is evident that Russia and Turkey are expanding their influences faster and wider on the Balkans due to its geopolitical and economic attractiveness, " he said.
The 8th 2BS Forum, in addition to regional issues, will open discussions and analysis of current global security issues, consider the challenges of foreign policy, discuss the consequences of increasingly present disinformation, and the way to tackle and suppress false news. There will also be discussions about the influence of the current security issues both on shaping international relations and on the future of Europe and the rest of the world.
On the second panel of the first day, there will be talks about populist right-wing parties that have succeeded in attracting voters across Europe, about their sudden rise in Germany, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, France and how they affect EU poles.
"Is democracy as we know it today an endangered species, and whether the future of European integration is questioned, are just some of the issues that this panel will try to answer. The first day of the forum is also dedicated to the subject of American foreign politics. After Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, in the circles of professionals and the public, there are more and more estimations and opinions that American foreign politics is changing dramatically. On the other hand, there are those who think that only rhetoric has been changed while the essence remained almost unchanged. Will the new administration's moves really put in question the continued pursuit of the three goals that are at the core of the US's big strategy: US presence abroad, the improvement of the liberal economic order and the creation, maintenance and revision of the global institutional order? We will find out from the eminent experts that will take part in the panel. In the Forum program, we have included a special panel concerning a significant topic: the cause and consequence of the religion and security issues. It is expected that this panel will come up with recommendations to establish more effective cooperation between the security policy and the religious communities to address common, burning security issues such as the de-legitimization of the proliferation of violent extremist ideologies and terrorism, migration, poverty, human trafficking and similar," said the Atlantic Alliance.
The 2BS Forum organizer is the Atlantic Alliance of Montenegro under the sponsorship of the Government of Montenegro and in cooperation with the US Embassy and NATO.
The eight 2BS Forum will be officially opened on May 22nd, 2018, at 10 am at Hotel Splendid in Becici.
Text by Vijesti Online, on May 18th 2018, read more at Vijesti
