Recent weeks have shown how quickly situations can change under US President Donald Trump. What could this mean for the Western Balkans?
The three Yugoslav wars of the 1990s – in Croatia (1991-95), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-95) and Kosovo (1999) – finally ended under US leadership. Since then, two military missions led by the EU and NATO have been ensuring peace in these former war zones. But for more than two years, the situation in the Western Balkans has been steadily deteriorating.
The spiral of violence began in December 2022. After representatives of the Serbian minority in the Republic of Kosovo under the guidance of Serbia's capital, Belgrade, left the institutions of the Kosovo state - the judiciary, police and administration - Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić began a buildup of troops on the northern border of the neighboring country.
Former German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger accused Vučić of wanting to "play the role of a little Putin." "I find it unimaginable how Vučić and the Serbian leadership are stirring up trouble here. I place the blame for this escalation exclusively on Belgrade."
Vučić, on the other hand, stressed that Serbia's army would protect the Serbian minority in Serbia's "southern province" - as the leadership in Belgrade still calls Kosovo, which has not been under Serbian control since 1999. During 2023, the situation escalated: In the riots in May, violent Serbs beat and injured 90 NATO soldiers from the peacekeeping force in Kosovo, KFOR.
The situation in Kosovo almost escalated
In September 2023, near the Serbian Orthodox monastery of Banjska in northern Kosovo, there was fighting between Serbian paramilitaries and Kosovo police. Four people were killed and dozens of Serbian paramilitaries led by a Vučić confidant managed to escape to Serbia. They left behind a modern military arsenal worth millions from the Serbian army's reserves, which could have equipped more than 100 fighters.
A larger military operation was apparently planned here - perhaps with the aim of occupying the four northern municipalities of Kosovo, where the Serb minority makes up the majority of the population in the predominantly Albanian country. In October 2023, Vučić then ordered tanks to head towards Kosovo, which were only stopped by diplomatic interventions from Washington and NATO.
In April 2024, US General Christopher Cavoli, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, warned the US Congress about Belgrade's intentions, saying that the surge of Serbian troops following the attack in Banjska was "the greatest threat of interstate violence" in 25 years.
Threats against Bosnia
Meanwhile, Serbia's Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin threatened another neighboring country during a visit to the Russian capital Moscow: "Bosnia has never been so close to its end." Shortly before, Milorad Dodik, the separatist president of the Serb-dominated "entity" in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska (RS), was sentenced by the Bosnian Supreme Court to one year in prison and a six-year ban on holding office.
Just days ago, Dodik had threatened that an indictment against him could deal a "fatal blow" to Bosnia. The RS president was accused of ignoring the decisions of the High Representative, Christian Schmidt. The High Representative is the highest institution of the international community in Bosnia, which has been ensuring peace in the country since the end of the 1992-95 war. After his conviction, Dodik went further and initiated the adoption of laws in the RS Parliament, which are in force in the official state security gazette.
"Serb traitors"
Following his conviction, Dodik initiated a series of laws in the Republika Srpska (RS) Parliament that would ban Bosnian security and justice agencies from operating in RS. The laws came into force on Friday (06.03.2025) – but have not been implemented by all authorities. Employees at the Bosnian headquarters of the Bosnian state police authority, the State Investigation and Security Agency (SIPA), continue to work, while their colleagues at the regional office in the RS capital, Banja Luka, have been dismissed.
RS President Dodik had warned: All those who remain in Bosnian state institutions will be treated as "Serb traitors." During a meeting with Serbian President Vučić in Belgrade on March 6, Dodik even claimed, "that Bosniaks from Sarajevo want an armed conflict in Bosnia," to "take revenge on Serbs."
Schmidt: "The red line has been crossed"
High Representative Schmidt reacted on March 8. On German national radio Deutschlandfunk, he said that with "Dodik's attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina" a "red line has been crossed." Schmidt called on the international community to commit itself more strongly to the crisis in Bosnia.
For the first time, the High Representative, in addition to Dodik, explicitly criticized the Serbian government, which "must be clearly shown its limits."
To protect the Srebrenica genocide memorial from possible attacks, the EU peacekeeping force, EUFOR, has deployed units to the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where armed Bosnian Serbs killed over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in August 1995.
Warning from the USA
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio's warning on March 8 on Platform X addressing Dodik is a positive signal, he writes: "The actions of the President of the RS, Milorad Dodik, undermine the institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina and threaten security and stability... We call on partners in the region to join us in acting against this dangerous and destabilizing stance."
Republican Congresswoman Ann Wagner of Missouri called Dodik a "brutal criminal" who must be stopped in her Platform X speech. "I am in contact with the U.S. State Department and my colleagues in Congress to consider how we can counter the Dodik government's flagrant efforts to undermine peace in the region," Wagner said.
Vučić increasingly autocratic
The NGO Human Rights Watch paints a bleak picture of the media landscape and press freedom in Serbia. Election monitoring groups criticized the December 2023 elections as neither fair nor free. The opposition was given little airtime by the media, which is about 90 percent controlled by the government. Vučić was given over 300 hours of television airtime that year. So he was and is ubiquitous.
The country fell from 91st to 98th place in the 2024 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, behind Tanzania. Amnesty International revealed that the Serbian government illegally uses spyware to spy on opponents. But despite his increasingly repressive policies, pressure on Vučić is growing.
Protests in Serbia are getting bigger and bigger
For the third time, in late January, a car drove into a protest rally in Belgrade against endemic corruption in Serbia, which protesters say is responsible, among other things, for the collapse of a supposedly newly renovated tent at the railway station in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad on November 1, 2024, where 15 people lost their lives.
Two doctors were seriously injured in the car attack at the January protest. After the first such car rampage in November 2024, Vučić mocked the victim on television: "Should we arrest the driver now? Someone who hasn't broken any laws, who was driving on his own street? Are you okay?"
Pensioners against Vučić
Meanwhile, the student protests, which began after the accident in Novi Sad, have been going on for almost four and a half months. They have become a mass movement, representing all segments of the Serbian population. This was evident in the demonstration on March 1, 2025 in the southern Serbian city of Niš, where thousands of students, who had marched there from all parts of Serbia, were enthusiastically welcomed, being entertained by tens of thousands of residents and cyclists, who had also come there specially.
The demonstration in Niš was not the largest in recent months - but the images must have been threatening to Vučić, because one of his main support groups, pensioners, was also represented in large numbers. It remains to be seen how this movement, which has no central leadership and strictly opposes any kind of political appropriation, will develop further. The next mass protest has been announced for March 15, in Belgrade.
What will the US do?
President Trump's political plans for the Western Balkans are still unknown. Economically as a private individual, he is active through his companies in Serbia and Albania. Trump's circle does not hide that Belgrade, linked to Moscow, is the president's favorite in Southeast Europe.
Since the end of the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the US has always been the one to ultimately resolve many small conflicts within and between successor states. Now not only observers, but also many people in the Western Balkan countries, are asking themselves: What would happen if Washington stopped doing this?
If President Trump abandons Ukraine, one of the United States' closest allies, as easily as he is doing now, how would he treat small states like Bosnia or Kosovo? The EU must be prepared for all eventualities in Southeast Europe. /DW/ (A2 Televizion)
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