Darinka Pavlič Kamien: You only need a ladder to raise the flag. Foreign policy, however, requires a backbone

It disappeared from the facade of the government palace faster than the names on the cabinet doors are changed after a change of government. And since nothing in politics is just a technical task, it wasn’t either. Flags are not just goods on a pole. Flags are messages. Sometimes quiet, sometimes loud, sometimes statesmanlike, and sometimes convenient for domestic political use. By promptly removing the flag from the government building on Gregorčičeva, Janš’s government said that it wanted to dismantle this symbolic capital immediately. No transition period, no diplomatic distance, no embarrassment. It is as if the first task of the new government is a general cleaning of the facade.

But the flag is not the only problem. The problem is that, with such moves, Slovenia shows again and again that it does not understand foreign policy as state continuity, but as an extension of the domestic political war. Anything can be a political prop for Slovenia. Something with which currently leading politicians mark their time and place. And this is dangerous for a small country.

We don’t have aircraft carriers in small countries. We don’t have big armies. We do not have the economic weight with which to move world currents. We have no political power. In small countries we can have something different. Principle. We don’t even have that. Principle is the greatest political strength of small countries. We cannot change the world overnight with principles, but we can use them to maintain our own credibility. A small country that lacks power must have a backbone. If it doesn’t have even that, it becomes just a training ground where the interests of the big ones turn into the enthusiasm of domestic political camps.