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Does Serbia plan to destabilize its neighbors Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina or even launch a military attack?
Both Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani and her Bosnian counterpart Denis Becirovic have recently warned of such a scenario.
In a television interview in September, Osmani said there is hope that the Western Balkans will join the EU and NATO, “but the condition for this is that Serbia is treated for what it is: a satellite state of Russia that is deepening its military , economic and political cooperation with Russia.”
Becirovic’s warning about Serbia’s territorial tendencies, which he delivered at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in late September, was even more emphatic.
Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani has warned that Serbia is ‘a satellite state of Russia that is deepening its military, economic and political cooperation with Russia’Image: Lev Radin/ZUMA Press/photo alliance
He said: “Here, on the podium of the UN General Assembly, I would like to publicly warn the global public that, once again, the leadership of (the) Republic of Serbia is threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
Belgrade’s ‘weapons buying spree’
It is a fact that Belgrade has invested massively in its armed forces for years, purchasing modern weapons such as French fighter jets and Russian attack helicopters, which Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has praised as “flying tanks.”
It has also purchased Chinese air defense systems, which were flown from Beijing to Belgrade shortly after Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine.
There are also reports that Serbia has acquired thousands of drones from Iran, the kind that Russia uses to bomb Ukrainian cities every day.
The British business magazine The Economist wrote in 2021 that Belgrade’s “purchasing lust for weapons” made its neighbors nervous.
Serbia is stockpiling weapons
The renowned Stockholm International Peace Research Institute noted in 2022 that Belgrade’s defense budget was ten times larger than Kosovo’s at 1.3 billion euros.
Serbia’s military dominance in the region is illustrated by its 250-strong fleet of main battle tanks, which is more than in all other former Yugoslav republics combined (by comparison, the German armed forces have 295 tanks).
Serbia’s neighbors – especially Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina – are concerned about Serbia’s rearmamentImage: Thomas Brey/dpa/picture alliance
Croatia is second in the former Yugoslavia with 75, Bosnia third with 45 and North Macedonia fourth with 31. Neither Montenegro nor Kosovo have tanks at all.
This is one reason why Kosovo’s small but growing armed forces were equipped with Turkish Bayraktar drones last year and 250 American Javelin anti-tank weapon systems this year.
Without these two weapon systems, which the Ukrainian army successfully uses in the fight against Russia, Ukraine would no longer exist in its current independent form.
The ‘Serbian World’ project
This raises the question of why Belgrade has stockpiled so many weapons in recent years without being threatened by its neighbors. Does President Vucic intend to attack Serbia’s neighbors as suggested by the President of Kosovo?
Statements, threats and actions by Serbian leaders seem to support this claim.
The Serbian leadership is pushing a project known as the ‘Serbian World’ – a somewhat watered-down version of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s ‘Greater Serbia’ ideology – which has received positive responses from Serbs in neighboring Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The ‘Serbian World’ idea promoted by Serbia’s current leaders is strongly reminiscent of the ‘Greater Serbia’ ideology of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic (pictured here on the right, in June 1999)Image: photo alliance/dpa
Milosevic died in 2006 in his cell at the detention center of the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague. To achieve his nationalist goal for Serbia – to unite all Serb-inhabited regions of the former Yugoslavia – Milosevic started four wars in the 1990s that killed 130,000 people.
Several high-ranking members of the Serbian government served under Milosevic, including President Aleksandar Vucic and Interior Minister Ivica Dacic, both of whom once led Milosevic’s propaganda team.
All-Serbian Assembly
In early June, President Vucic led an “All-Serb Assembly” attended by representatives of Serb communities in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. The slogan of the meeting, which was held in Belgrade, was “Serbia and Republika Srpska — One people, one assembly.”
It was a strategic meeting that formulated a statement that could be described as the implementation plan for the ‘Serbian world’.
The declaration describes Kosovo as an inalienable part of Serbia. There is also talk of the ‘united national interest of the Serbian people’.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic hosted the All-Serb Assembly in Belgrade last June. The meeting was attended by ethnic Serbs from all countries of the former YugoslaviaImage: Darko Vojinovic/AP/dpa/picture alliance
A German Foreign Ministry spokesman in Berlin issued an unusually strong condemnation, saying the German government found the statement “very worrying and harmful for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and all countries in the Western Balkans.”
Becirovic commented on the June 8 meeting in Belgrade his speech to the UNsaying his statement was “destructive” and that it was “not just a declarative act, but a dangerous program document of a larger state that threatens the Dayton Peace Agreement and the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
Is there war on the horizon?
None of the neighboring countries that appear to be the focus of Belgrade’s territorial interests have armed forces ready for war.
Without the protection of the two Western peacekeeping missions in the region – NATO forces in Kosovo (KFOR) and the EU-led EUFOR/Althea force in Bosnia – they would be easy prey for any aggressive expansionism on Belgrade’s part .
In recent years, several Serbian troop buildups on the Kosovo border and an attack by a Serbian paramilitary unit on Kosovo’s security forces have caused unrest and tension. Precisely such Serbian paramilitary attacks started the war in Croatia in 1991 and a year later in Bosnia.
The role of Republika Srpska
It is possible that Belgrade was testing the waters. However, the response from both the US and NATO was swift and unequivocal, and Belgrade withdrew.
Washington intervened again in August, this time in the form of CIA Director William Burns, who traveled to Bosnia and Herzegovina specifically to put an end to the separatist activities of Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik.
Increased tensions between Kosovo and Serbia have occasionally led to border closures between the two countries in recent yearsImage: Visar Kryeziu/dpa/AP/picture alliance
Dodik has already taken several steps towards declaring the independence of Republika Srpska and has armed thousands of members of paramilitary organizations.
Politicians in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo are preparing for the possibility that Republika Srpska could push for secession. Should this lead to an armed conflict and the Bosnian Serbs come under military pressure, it is very likely that Belgrade could send its tanks to Bosnia to support the Bosnian Serbs.
A new war in the Balkans cannot therefore be ruled out.
How would a Trump administration respond?
It is completely unclear how the US under a Trump administration would respond to such a situation. A hotly tipped candidate for the post of Secretary of State under Trump is former US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell.
Grenell and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have major business interests in Serbia.
This article was originally published in German and edited by Aingeal Flanagan.